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Baylor University has announced that a small archive of Civil War letters has been digitized and is now available at the Baylor University Library Digital Collections site. The collection consists of thirty-two letters, mostly between a soldier and his sweetheart. The letters have been both digitized and transcribed; from the front page of the collection you can browse the letters in chronological order. The next-to-last item is the burial receipt for John Coleman, who wrote most of the letters (he died in 1880) and the last item — a really nice touch — is a chronological transcription of all the letters, presented in a PDF file. Click on a letter and you’ll get a good-sized picture; a lot of them are tough to read however (especially the ones written on blue paper.) On the left nav you’ll have the option to view the document description (the letter itself), the page description, or the page and text. Choose the page and text option; you’ll get a good copy of the letter to browse but also a transcription in a popup window. The transcriptions aren’t perfect, but they’re very good. John Coleman is an interesting man. Melancholy, frustrated, worried about his girlfriend and family, occasionally bored, he mixes home and war news equally. His girlfriend writes back patiently, their letters often missing each other. The good transcriptions and the focus on two people make this a fascinating read. Well done Baylor.

GPS for the Web A reader response in the October 2006 issue of Family Tree Magazine caught my eye:It astonishes me that a magazine such as yours would publish an article telling its readers of the many resources available on a "fresh-faced" Cyndi's List <cyndislist.com> without warning them that the site has not been seriously updated since mid-2003 ("Upping the Ante," June 2006).  By looking at the new, temporarily uncategorized links, you'll see that Cyndi Howells hasn't been moving these linkst into her main index for almost three years.Well that might explain why I haven't been successful getting Family Matters added to the list. My point is . . .  Why depend on an out-dated technology when you can use the online version of a GPS system to maintain your own set of research waypoints throughout the Internet.  And, you can easily share them with others - either in a research group or one-to-one.  You can do all this and much more with Diigo.  Diigo is different from other social bookmarking systems in that it allows you to add your own sticky notes to your bookmark and share those notes with others if you wish.  It's easy to select a page or a bit of text and email that information to someone.  And, because your bookmarks are managed on Diigo's servers, your bookmarks and notes are available to your from any computer.  It gets better.  Diigo is a free service.  Once you have created you account, download and install the appropriate toolbar (available for Foxfire, Internet Explorer and Flock) or bookmarklet and you're ready to go.  If you already use other social bookmarking platforms - like del.icio.us or My Web - you can set your toolbar options to automatically create bookmarks there too. Diigo is a researcher's dream.  The email forwarding alone is worth its weight in gold!  Stop by the Diigo site and see for yourself.

GPS for the Web A reader response in the October 2006 issue of Family Tree Magazine caught my eye:It astonishes me that a magazine such as yours would publish an article telling its readers of the many resources available on a "fresh-faced" Cyndi's List <cyndislist.com> without warning them that the site has not been seriously updated since mid-2003 ("Upping the Ante," June 2006).  By looking at the new, temporarily uncategorized links, you'll see that Cyndi Howells hasn't been moving these linkst into her main index for almost three years.Well that might explain why I haven't been successful getting Family Matters added to the list. My point is . . .  Why depend on an out-dated technology when you can use the online version of a GPS system to maintain your own set of research waypoints throughout the Internet.  And, you can easily share them with others - either in a research group or one-to-one.  You can do all this and much more with Diigo.  Diigo is different from other social bookmarking systems in that it allows you to add your own sticky notes to your bookmark and share those notes with others if you wish.  It's easy to select a page or a bit of text and email that information to someone.  And, because your bookmarks are managed on Diigo's servers, your bookmarks and notes are available to your from any computer.  It gets better.  Diigo is a free service.  Once you have created you account, download and install the appropriate toolbar (available for Foxfire, Internet Explorer and Flock) or bookmarklet and you're ready to go.  If you already use other social bookmarking platforms - like del.icio.us or My Web - you can set your toolbar options to automatically create bookmarks there too. Diigo is a researcher's dream.  The email forwarding alone is worth its weight in gold!  Stop by the Diigo site and see for yourself.