randomosity

Beyond Quadrants

Irish Crown Jewels

A good friend of mine has arranged access to the digitised records of the New York Emigrant Savings Bank for 1850-1883. What a wondrous treasure trove of information! These records contain the deposit details for thousands of newly-arrived immigrants to New York from 1850. The bank was established by the Irish Emigrants Society and served a largely Irish population. Amazingly, the Emigrant Savings Bank is still around, holding about $15 billion in assets.
These older records are an immediate resource for genealogists. In addition to transaction details, the records include a ‘test book’ which contains information on place of residence, spouse and children, occupation, and additional other nuggets of information¹. This information was compiled when a depositor wished to send money back home to Ireland. I am particularly fascinated by the ledgers which record deposits and withdrawals for a large groups of people over a substantial period of time. There is a huge further digitisation project here to continue to enter data from these records into formats allowing for further study.
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1. Check out the finding aid from the NYPL referenced above for more details [↩]

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Norman on Photography

The IKEA Game

In my continuing effort to direct you away from my blog, I am compelled to note Bill Turkel’s follow-up to a post I referenced last week. In this one he ponders our conscious creation of “islands of stasis” and why an anachronistic mode of research practise persists. More importantly his ‘punchline’ refers briefly to how to make use of tools, such as Zotero, efficiently to comprehend our private research processes. He muses “that measurements of your Zotero bibliography will be most useful to the extent that they are fed back into your research in a useful way.” This is very powerful observation and activity, but also dangerous.
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In times past, December visits to Munich have been warmed by new fallen snow and the glowing booths of the Christkindlmarkt. Munich this year had yet to see snow and the temperatures of 7/8C and rain seemed somehow less festive. People were still out in huge numbers socialising at the various markets about town, but the lack of snow was a literal damperon the occassion. So when I decided that the day was nigh to head off south to make my very first visit to the Konigschloss’s in the Schwangau, I was hopeful. I expected similar weather, but also enchanting architecture and scenery.
As the slow regional train departed Munich first thing in the morning, Munich was a little grey, dry, but grey and overcast.

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