I found the article below and I have to say tho I am not suprised it really makes me mad. There will always be those who prey on others. So as you are doing your research I would encourage you to make sure you take the time to do your due diligence when spending your money online.
If your instincts tell you something isn’t right… listen to yourself. There is virtually nothing online that you cant find on another site that will assure you of your purchase and have your best interest at heart. Most reputable sites have a disclaimer, privacy policy and contact information including phone and email when you are buying anything. If they don’t please proceed with caution.
By Dave Murray @ Monday, September 22, 2008 12:23 PM http://www.itexaminer.com/
An international network of consumer watchdogs is sweeping the internet targeting genealogy and family history research in the search for scammers.
The International Consumer Protection and Enforcement Network is looking for sites that seek to deceive shoppers, investors and researchers with false claims, scams and overhyped promises.
Apparently there are all sorts of sites out there where researchers claim to provide your family tree. However some customers are claiming that if a family tree ever arrives in the mail, it appears to be made up by the scammers.
The sites targeted and trapped by the sweep will be given notice to clean up the information they provide consumers. Others might be asked to take down their site.
Consumer watchdogs have been fairly successful lately in targeting sites who think they can avoid consumer law. In Australia. The Australian Competition and Consumer Commission recently launched a criminal investigation into a site called Designer Brand Outlet. While it promised discount designer clothes only to deliver fakes or not supply the product at all.
The ACCC closed the site and there are Federal Court injunctions issued against its owners.
All genealogists are challenged to some degree when they have to read and interpret documents in original handwriting. And the further back in time the handwriting sample is, the greater the challenge, until our own language looks foreign to us. A Web site aimed at scholars and researchers aspires to change all of that. English Handwriting 1500-1700, an online course, is a remarkably professional and thorough course of study, certainly equivalent to a college class.
The site is at www.english.cam.ac.uk/ceres/ehoc/index.html and contains 28 self-guided lessons ranging in degree of difficulty from 1 to 5. Each lesson divides the computer screen into four sections: the first shows the sample text that you are to work with. The second section is your transcription window, where you type in your interpretation of the sample text. The third section gives you information about the sample you are working with, a description of the hand (type of writing) and the date it was written. The fourth section consists of various help buttons you can click on, view a transcription of the sample, show the written letters of alphabet in upper or lower case, see a table of common abbreviations, and take a test on this sample. The material in the 28 lessons starts with a level 1 in difficulty (I found this level easy) and works its way up to a level 5.
The site also has lots of supporting data, which should be looked at before attempting the courses. Included is a historical introduction that describes and illustrates the inks, resins, writing instruments, and surfaces used. This part gives the recipes and methods that were used to make a usable ink or to prepare a surface for writing, and it illustrates examples with actual pictures rather than drawings.
The transcription conventions section defines, lists, and gives examples of methods of abbreviation, which includes contractions (leaving out letters in the middle of a word, such as “Dr” for “Doctor” ), suspension (leaving off the end letters of a word, such as “etc” for “et cetera”), and brevigraphs (using a symbol to indicate a word or part of a word, such as “&” for “and” and the Greek chi-“X”-for “Christ”). Tildes (~) were placed over a letter to indicate that letters in the word have been omitted. Superscripts were letters written smaller and placed above the baseline as a sort of shortcut. The punctuation marks used (quite different from modern ones) are also discussed and illustrated.
The alphabets section illustrates two “hands” or styles of writing used in various documents-the Italic hand and the Jacobian Court hand. The user can view written examples these hands as well as examples of the upper or lower case letters of the “secretarie” alphabet, which was used during this time period.
The section on dating and describing hands tells how some of the different hands evolved over time and defines different features of writing and letter formation. Dating can be tricky, as the date on a document might actually be the date it was transcribed by the writer from another, older, document.
The sample transcriptions section is a shortcut for those not wanting to take the 28 lessons, but still wanting to look at each of the sample documents and study it along with it’s transcription.
This is a great site to visit to refine your skills in transcribing old handwriting. Anyone graduating from this online classroom will be close to an “expert” by the time they are finished. The site is free to use with no registration.
• If you are interested in going to the Allen County Public Library for a research trip Nov. 12-14, contact David Bonnett at davidbonnett@verizon.net or visit the WVGS Web site at www.inwvgs.org for trip information and prices.
It is very common for a person irrespective of his or her background to want to learn more about the family history, and given that in recent times there has been a lot of demand for finding out as much as possible about family history and also genealogy lists services, people need this information and the best option open to them is to know how genealogy search can be done fast, efficiently and with best results. This may be easier said than done because now that it is possible to conduct genealogy search through the medium of the Internet, there is vast amount of information available, and so more people are using this medium for conducting their genealogy search.
The Internet Will Throw Up Mountains Of Information
We all have been given a great resource in the Internet to search for vast amount of information, which beats searching manually through old dusty files hidden away in some antique labrary which may take hours or days of searching. Today, you can easily conduct genealogy search through the Internet and find birth records, marriage and death certificates and even addresses all of which was once very difficult to achieve.
So, today if you are wondering about your family ancestry, you can join hundreds who are hooked onto genealogy freeware, who can, without much fuss or bother, begin to build your own family tree using simple genealogy search methods. Search family records, approximate year of birth, death, marriage, and lookup census records and that should give you the information that you’re looking to attain.
One thing that you should make a point of while conducting genealogy search whether it is via the Internet or looking through library records, you will be able to make better discoveries and thus unearth little known facts related to your family, and who knows, even get to know of less known secrets as well. There will be times when you will hit a wall with your genealogy search leading to frustration, so be prepared to face obstacles. In the end, the time you put into your genealogy search should prove to be fruitful as well as a bit of an adventure in it.
I dont know if you would call it a competition per se’ but there is an ongoing public opinion debate going on about the the indexing projects being done by Ancestry.com and the World Archives Project.
Ancestry.com, started in 1996 is a membership site providing online records for a cost varying on the database you wish to access and the World Archives Project is a volunteer driven site free to the public. While some of the records are in common to both sites, not ALL are.
Either side of the debate you fall on I am of the opinion that BOTH services have there place in genealogy research and we are living in a fortunate time where we have the choice and the ability to research online using their wonderful services.
Current Promotion
World Vital Records has just launched a new promotion on our site. They are including a free one year magazine subscription when a user signs up for a one year WorldVitalRecords.com Unlimited membership. They get both the magazine and the subscription for $99! It is one of the best offers they have ever done on the site. You will be able to choose one of three free magazines including Internet Genealogy, Discovering Family History, and Family Chronicle Magazine. The promotion is set to expire in a few days. But they may choose to extend the offer through the end of the month.
If you are anything like me I like to have these magazines to reference at times when I am not using my computer and I LOVE to save money in the process. This is a great value.
