Miscellaneous tips

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A collection of miscellaneous tips and tricks not covered in other articles that might help you with your research.


Access some subscription websites with a Library Card

  • In England, a Borough or County Library Card may enable you to access The Times remotely but probably not other historical newspaper sites. However, enquire what is available to you both from your local library and the libraries of surrounding boroughs as what is on offer can differ widely and membership requirements are usually easily met. Popular choices available online include The Oxford Dictionary of National Biography and Who's Who & Who Was Who. Other subscription sites may be available from terminals in the library itself e.g. Ancestry - this may sound restrictive but, if you already subscribe at a base level, may be useful for consultation when you want to look up a source restricted to premium subscribers.
As an example, Suffolk Reference Direct shows the databases available to the users of the 44 local libraries of Suffolk County Council. Ancestry and FindMyPast are available but must be accessed in a local library or record office, while other databases are available on home computers.

Access some articles in the JSTOR subscription website for free

JSTOR is a not-for-profit organisation which provides access to scholarly journals, primary sources, and books. In addition to access through the British Library, or through some library cards, (such as those issued by the National Libraries of Scotland, Wales and Australia) some items may be accessed for free, on your home computer, up to three items from the archive every two weeks. More details are in the article JSTOR Register & Read—Free Reading of Historical Scholarship.

Browse the titles of the Journals and books available in the JSTOR website. Includes a Search facility. Note however, not all articles are available under the free scheme. An example of an article available is "Real Incomes of the British Middle Class, 1760-1850: The Experience of Clerks at the East India Company" by H. M. Boot The Economic History Review, New Series, Vol. 52, No. 4 (Nov., 1999), pp. 638-668

Access an obsolete website in archive.org

Capture a web page in archive.org

  • Perhaps you may want to “capture a web page as it appears now for use as a trusted citation in the future”. For example, you may want to save a web page which has a family history reference. Use this archive.org link and select Save Page Now
Does not apply to all websites. Read the FAQs: Wayback Machine for more details of the types of webites which cannot be archived.

Find the meaning of words used in India

Convert a date which has used the Bengali Calendar

Find an exchange rate

  • Prior to 1871, 1 rupee was equal to two shillings (24 pence), so there were 10 rupees to the pound.
  • An old page from Wikipedia History of the rupee, accessed 30 August 2013 contains the following data
Rupee exchange rate in pence
1871–1872: 23 ⅛
1875–1876: 21⅝
1879–1880: 20
1883–1884: 19½
1887–1888: 18⅞
1890–1891: 18⅛
1891–1892: 16¾
1892–1893: 15
Source: B.E. Dadachanji. History of Indian Currency and Exchange, 3rd enlarged ed. (Bombay: D.B. Taraporevala Sons & Co, 1934), p. 15.

Translate from another language into English

Perhaps you have found a webpage which is not in English. You can obtain a computer produced translation of non English wording using Google Translate, or some browsers such as Google Chrome have an automatic option to translate webpages.

Find out the meaning of an archaic medical term

Useful for interpreting the cause of death on a burial record or the medical conditions on a soldier's service record.

Read old handwriting

Use Photo Editing software to better define old handwriting

  • Consumer vs. Professional Photo Editing Software by James Tanner April 5, 2013 includes a comment following the article, by Sherry Morgan, April 30, 2013 “I use photo editing software for documents as much as for restoring photos and one can do some decent work with a free program called Irfanview. It does have a learning curve, ... I use it frequently at our Family History Center after scanning microfilm or microfiche to clean up or an all over brighten or darken and contrast to better define old handwriting”. FamilySearch Blog

Photographs

Scan photographs

Digitally restore old photographs

Scan negatives

Date family photographs

TechTips

The FamilySearch website has two series of general TechTips, some of which appear under 'Photographs' above

Aspects to consider when hiring a professional researcher

Search for a Library which holds a book you want to read

Search for books on a particular topic

Copy Information from Full View Google Books

Refer Google Books

Scan and edit a document-OCR (Optical Character Recognition)

Send money to India

  • This India List thread and this India List post dated May 2012 suggests some methods.

Use the Virtual Magnifying Glass

You may find this Virtual Magnifying Glass is useful.

For Fibiwiki editors

  • It is possible in many cases, to create an archived URL in the Wayback Machine in Archive.org which is a capture of a web page at that date, using this link and selecting Save Page Now.
When adding a URL to the Fibiwiki, consider
  • creating an archived URL, as protection against a future "broken link" and then,
  • whether it is better to use the archived URL in your Fibiwiki edit. It may be better in cases where the link is to a particular page rather than a website generally, or when you feel the URL may not be very permanent.
Once you have archived one page, you may want to click though to other relevant pages to ensure they are also archived.
URLs with a pdf format may be archived, although it is not clear whether there is a maximum size limit.
Note that it is not possible to always to archive a URL, and some photographs may not be displayed in the archived version. Read the FAQs: Wayback Machine for more details of the types of websites which cannot be archived.
  • In those cases where you are not able to create a link in archive.org, a cached URL may be an alternative. If you come across a website or URL as a result of a Google search, there may be a link to a cached version of the URL, via a little downward arrow in the search result. Sometimes you can find a cached version by typing a URL in Google search. Note cached versions of pdfs may not contain photographs from the original files and many pdfs do not appear to have cashed versions. This may be a useful tool for items on sale on ebay, such as postcards, where it is sometimes not possible to otherwise (permanently or semi permanently) capture the image.
  • Oocities.org This website was set up in 2009 to preserve content from the closed website "geocities.com". It may be possible to recreate a link from geocities.com
  • Convert a pdf URL to a docs.google version using Google docs Viewer. This provides an alternative way to view a pdf, with thumbnail pages. On some browsers you may be able to scroll through more quickly.