TBWAIN - AKA Jeff Svare's Blog

The new Shelby GT500 was displayed at the New York Auto Show on 23 March. This is car is simply beautiful. Take a look at Autoblog's report titled: New York Auto Show: Mustang Shelby Cobra GT500 - Coupes - coupes.autoblog.com _ for pictures!

At least, that's what it seems like. This is my second conference in two weeks, and instead of being a participant, this time I actually have to do something. :-) Being conference co-chair isn't all glitz and glam, but fortunately the conferences and workshops folks at BYU really know how to handle the logistics of a conference like this. Thanks Rob, John, Steve and all the rest! David Rencher of the LDS Church's Family and Church History Department gave the conference keynote this morning and made public announcment that selected public-domain family histories (pre-1928) are being scanned and placed online. These books can now be accessed by a hyperlink from the Family History Library Catalog . The hyperlink takes you to Family History Archive website at the Lee Library @ Brigham Young University where the digital images of the books are hosted. So take another look at the catalog. There may be something new in that catalog record for that old family history you've ...

Well, I'm back from the Computers in Libraries conference in Washington, D.C., and working on a presentation for the Brigham Young University Computerized Genealogy Conference on 25-26 March. My good friend Kip Sperry is the conference chairman. I actually used to work for Kip from 1987-1991. I guess he's fully recovered from the experience by now. Anway, I was going through my notes and found something that just amazes me. Since I first started posting genealogical data on the Internet in 1998, I have been in contact with over 130 different relations that I didn't know about. I think the actual number may be closer to 150, but I can't find contact information for about thirty people. 130 new cousins. That's incredible. Someone should organize a virtual reunion for all of us.

One of the presentations I attened at the CIL conference today was entitled "Wikis @ Your Library" presented by Will Richardson of www.weblogg-ed.com fame. He began by asking the audience to turn and ask the person sitting next to them what a wiki is. Not surprisingly, mos people were unsure how to respond. He described a wiki as a "tool of the read/write web." I really like that definition. I don't know if it's original with Will or not, but I think it is accurate. It's definitely a tool that can promote the dissemination of knowledge. One example he gave was how the information on the Indian Ocean tsunami of 26 December 2004 grew and changed over a period of a very short time. Now it's an extremely comprehensive site with links to online news reports about the disaster. What's Trek got to do with this? One of the sites he showed was the Memory Alpha Wiki . A truly great site for Trek fans. Now if some of these librarians would just get...

So here I am in Washington, D.C, at the Computers in Libraries Conference and I notice that the computer they are using has the Windows Update dialog on the screen. You know the one I mean. That annoying little thing that says your computer is updated with the latest patches from Microsoft and needs to be restarted. Well, on this dialog box there are two buttons and the little "X" button in the upper right corner. The buttons say, "restart computer" and "update later." Well, instead of clicking the "update later" button, they kept using the "X" button in the corner to close the box. Well, evidently this action isn't the same as clicking the "update later" button, because the stupid, excuse me, silly dialog box kept appearing every ten minutes! Note to Bill Gates: When a user clicks the "X" button they mean "update later." By the way, the conference is being blogged at the InfoToday blog .

...and the 1801 census. According to the index another probate was held on Kongsparten farm on May 10th, 1768. This probate was for Anne Pedersdatter, the deceased wife of Ole Østensen. Ole previously appeared in the index in 1760, when he was listed as the oldest son of Østen Olsen and Anne Iversdatter. Somewhere in between 1760 and 1768 Ole married and his wife died. Checking the church records, I found that Ole and Anne were married 14 June 1762 in Sell chapel. Judging from the annotation in the marriage record, Anne was from the neighboring parish of Frøn. Then, six years later, in May of 1768, the burial of Anne Pedersdatter, age 30, is recorded in the Vågå parish register. Then on the 10th of May, a probate for Anne Pedersdatter was held. This probate does not list any children for Ole and Peder, but does list Anne's heirs. I don't know what happpened to Ole after that, but I assume he died sometime before the 1801 census, as he doesn't appear there. So, who is...

In my quest to find out who Østen Kongsparten was I decided to take a look at the index to the Nordre Gudbrandsdal probate records. These records have card index arranged alphabetically by farm, and then chronologically. This is an excellent resource for family history research because the index gives the volume, page number and date for the probate, the deceased, spouse, and may include children, their spouses, grandchildren, or heirs and relations. Here's what the index for Kongsparten farm shows: b.2, 1673-1688 Kongsparten i Vaage, fol. 26b 1675 Novbr 22 Rønne Olufsdtr + g.m. Hallduord Jonsen Barn: 1. Jon Hallduordsen 2. Gunnild Hallduordsdtr 3. Ingerj " b. 6, 1752-1764 Kongsparten i Sel, Vågå, fol 525a 1760 Martj 28 Østen Olsen g.m. Anne Iversdtr Barn: 1. Ole 28 år 2. Rønnoug g.m. Hans Bergen 3. Barbro " Sven Pedersen husm. 4. Anne 22 år 5. Kari 12 år b. 7, 1765-1773 Kongsparten i Sel, Vågå, Fol 242b 1768 10 Mai Anne Pedersdtr + g.m. Ole Østensen søskende 1. Peder 3...