National Library of Scotland Directories

The National Library of Scotland now has now reached over 700 digitized post office directories posted online. These directories cover most of Scotland and date from 1773 to 1911. The directories list alphabetically the name of the inhabitants, their address and often their profession. Access is free.  With their alphabetical list of a location's inhabitants and information on their profession and address, the directories enable you easily to find out where people lived at a certain time and how they earned their living.  

Church of Ireland Gazette

The Church of Ireland has put online all 52 editions of the church’s official weekly gazette for the year 1913. The Church of Ireland gazette essentially served as the weekly newspaper for the church. It lists specific names, places and events that occurred in 1913. The gazette can be searched by keyword or phrase. 

Cloud Convert

Has someone sent you a word processing document in a file format your word processor doesn't understand? Or a digital image that you cannot open? Have you received a file format via email which you cannot open on your smartphone or tablet? Perhaps you dragged out a CD-ROM disk from the storage box, only to find it has files on it stored in a format your new computer doesn't understand? Usually that means searching for a program that will read the other file, purchasing the program, installing it, and hoping it will convert the old file. Maybe it will, maybe it won't. Now there is a better way and it is in the cloud. It is also available free of charge to everyone: Windows users, Macintosh users, Linux, Android, and Apple iPhone and iPad users.

CloudConvert supports the conversion between more than 100 different audio, video, document, ebook, archive, image, spreadsheet and presentation formats. You can specify advanced options for every conversion type. Best of all, it is available to you now and it is free of charge.

The Down Survey

The Down Survey, so called because a chain was laid down and a scale made, was taken from 1656-8 under the direction of William Petty. Using the Civil Survey as a guide, teams of surveyors, mainly former soldiers, were sent out under Petty’s direction to measure every townland to be forfeited to soldiers and adventurers. The resulting maps, made at a scale of 40 perches to one inch (the modern equivalent of 1:50,000), were the first systematic mapping of a large area on such a scale attempted anywhere. The primary purpose of these maps was to record the boundaries of each townland and to calculate their areas with great precision. The maps are also rich in other detail showing churches, roads, rivers, castles, houses and fortifications. Most towns are represented pictorially and the cartouches, the decorative titles, of each map in many cases reflect a specific characteristic of each barony.


These maps and a lot more information have now been placed online on a web site created by Trinity College Dublin. If you can trace your ancestors back to the 1600s, you may be able to find a lot more about them by using the maps of the Down Survey of Ireland web site. Not only will you find names, but eve maps of their villages, showing roads, churches, and even buildings.


The maps chart the changes in land ownership in Ireland. Users can search by the names of landowners in 1641 and in 1670. It also displays ownership by religion. The web site also displays a lot of other historical information, such as roads and even a Map of the Ulster 1641 Depositions showing the number of recorded murders in each townland.

Yad Vashem

Yad Vashem, the Jewish Holocaust victims website continues to add more genealogy records. This free access website now records some 4 million names and biographical details. This is approximately 2/3 of the roughly six million Jews killed by the Nazis. The database can be searched by name and place of residence. Yad va Shem also accepts submissions of testimony and photographs.
Their mission :
As the Jewish people’s living memorial to the Holocaust, Yad Vashem safeguards the memory of the past and imparts its meaning for future generations. Established in 1953, as the world center for documentation, research, education and commemoration of the Holocaust, Yad Vashem is today a dynamic and vital place of intergenerational and international encounter.

For over half a century, Yad Vashem has been committed to four pillars of remembrance:

• Commemoration
• Documentation
• Research
• Education

Connected Histories

Connected Histories brings together a range of digital resources related to early modern and nineteenth century Britain with a single federated search that allows sophisticated searching of names, places and dates, as well as the ability to save, connect and share resources within a personal workspace.  Most resources can be accessed free, some require subscriber login, such as Origins.net.  Resources include British History Online, British Museum Images, Clergy of the VChurch of England database, the Charles Booth Archive, Convict Transportation Registers database, History of Parliament, House of Commons Parliamentary Papers, Lane's Masonic Records, Proceedings of the Old Bailey, and the Witches of Early Modern England.

International Committee of the Red Cross

The International Committee of the Red Cross is digitizing the records of the International Agency for Prisoners of War (1914-1919).  The results will be available online in 2014.  These documents, which are protected by Unesco Memory of the World program, are meant to be a memorial to the war prisoners of the First World War.

Throughout the war, the Agency collected, analysed and organized information, which it received from detaining powers and National agencies, on individual enemy prisoners.  On the archival level, the Agency has generated with these documents a research system – a manual database - consisting mainly in series of lists, around 500'000 pages, and a card index counting 6 million cards.