Genealogy Research Support

Saves and manages frequently-entered text for later pasting into Web page forms in Firefox or email and newsgroup messages in Thunderbird. Pasting a clipping is accomplished with just two mouse clicks, eliminating the hassle of retyping or repetitive copying and pasting.

iMacros was designed to automate the most repetitious tasks on the web. If there’s an activity you have to do repeatedly, just record it in iMacros. The next time you need to do it, the entire macro will run at the click of a button! With iMacros, you can quickly and easily fill out web forms, remember passwords, download information from other sites, scrape the Web (get data from multiple sites), and more. You can keep the macros on your computer for your own use, or share them with others by embedding them on your homepage, blog, company Intranet or any social bookmarking service.

Digital technologies and the Internet offer unprecedented opportunities for
the promotion, preservation, revitalization and protection of intangible cultural
heritage, such as traditional music, art, performances, symbols and designs.

Many valuable initiatives are using these new technologies to record, digitize
and disseminate databases of these traditional cultural expressions.

However, the digitization and wider dissemination of traditional cultural expressions
can lead to their misappropriation and misuse. For example, cultural heritage
safeguarding efforts have sometimes unwittingly led to the unauthorized commercial
exploitation of culturally sensitive materials.

As a result, indigenous organizations, museums and archives, and cultural researchers
have called for guidance on which IP issues and options arise during recording
and digitization initiatives.

In response, the WIPO Creative Heritage Project is developing best practices
and guidelines for managing IP issues when recording, digitizing and
disseminating intangible cultural heritage. The project also comprises:

• IT assistance, in the form of technical support for the recording
  and digitization of traditional cultural expressions, and the establishment
  of digital collections and websites; and
  
  
• the WIPO Creative Heritage Digital Gateway, through which samples
  of the world's diverse traditional cultural expressions can be experienced.

4. Search your favorite websites from Yahoo! itself.

For instance, type !wiki google in Yahoo! search box to search Google in Wikipedia.com. Other popular shortcuts are !ebay, !amazon, and !flickr. You can also execute these from the Firefox search box without changing the default search engine.

It’s the time of year for me to consider, like the songwriter, "what to leave in, what to leave out."

As a history buff, it’s an important concept. A lot of stuff is constantly going on all around us. How do we decide what’s history and what’s not worth our attention? What do we hang on to and what do we discard?

With these three plug-ins, you can search three specialized University of Michigan library collections:

• Mirlyn Search Mirlyn is the University of Michigan library catalog. There are three separate plug-ins, one each for general search, title search, and author search.
• OAIster Search OAIster is a union catalog of over 12 million digital resources, gathered from all over the world. This plug-in provides a keyword or phrase search of the catalog.
• Deep Blue Search Deep Blue provides access to the best in UM-authored scholarly and creative works. There are plug-ins for the collection as a whole and for the Ross School of Business Working Papers series.

Once a plug-in is installed (see instructions, below), simply select it from the search box's menu (by clicking on the icon -- probably the Google "G" on most browsers) and selecting the search engine you wish to use. Type search terms as usual, and push the return key.

Finally! The Desperate Genealogist's Idea Book: Creative Ways to Outsmart Your Elusive Ancestors is available for purchase.

A tag-team effort by DeadFred.com and some of genealogy's top ancestral sleuths and accomplished writers, this 150-page e-book is packed with articles and case studies that reveal invaluable tips, shortcuts, resources and even step-by-step instructions on how to use overlooked research tools, conduct specialized searches and tackle brick walls with sheer ingenuity.

ScribeFire (previously Performancing for Firefox) is a full-featured blog editor that integrates with your browser and lets you easily post to your blog. You can drag and drop formatted text from pages you are browsing, take notes, and post to your blog.

ScribeFire (previously Performancing for Firefox) is a full-featured blog editor that integrates with your browser and lets you easily post to your blog. You can drag and drop formatted text from pages you are browsing, take notes, and post to your blog.