ADAH Increases Collections Available on the Internet

In Celebration of Archives Week, the Alabama Department of Archives and History (ADAH) is debuting a new service available on its website - CONTENTdm®. CONTENTdm® is an image management software that supports distribution of images of ADAH collections on its web site. Come to ADAH on Tuesday, October 16, 2007, from 10 AM to 11 AM for a demonstration of the new software and content available online!

CONTENTdm®, a digital collection management system, allows archivists to store, index, and display digitized primary resources online. Developed at the University of Washington, the program is in wide use at special collections repositories and research libraries across the country.

The first collections created for CONTENTdm® are under the ADAH Digital Collections and include Alabama Photographs and Pictures Collection, Alabama State Publications, and the Frank W. Boykin Collection. Boykin represented Alabama’s First Congressional District from 1935 to 1963. His collection alone contains more than a thousand items of personal and official correspondence, political memorabilia, and photographs. They are available thanks to a donation from the Tensaw Land and Timber Company in honor of Boykin’s granddaughter, Ocllo Malone.
Archives staffers are continuing to learn the system and entering data on a continuous basis in the Alabama Photographs and Pictures and Alabama State Publications collections. Work is also being done to completed four future collections in a timely manner. These are the Selma to Montgomery March, Civil War Period Flag Collection, Confederate Officers Photograph Album, and Alabama Governors. More information regarding ADAH Digital Collections may be found at http://216.226.178.196/ or call (334) 353-4635.

1867 Alabama Voter Registration Database Online

For those of us whose ancestors came in some of the burned counties of Alabama, this is quite exciting news! The 1867 Alabama Voter Registration database is online. Currently all entries are available for Macon, Pickens, Pike, Russell, Shelby, St. Clair, Sumter, Talladega, Tallapoosa, Tuscaloosa, Walker, Wilcox, and Winston counties are available. I'm off to check out those Walker County entries right now! Now -- if they'll just hurry and get Fayette online too.

Update: I noticed that some entries for Perry county are also showing up in the results!

Tuscaloosa County, AL Record Update

Dear Myrtle has an update (and a response to the update) on her blog about the situation mentioned earlier regarding Tuscaloosa County's proposed destruction of original records.

Alabama Genealogical Society Fall Seminar

Saturday, October 13, 2007 8:30 AM Central Time

The Alabama Genealogical Society will hold its Fall seminar at the Alabama Archives in Montgomery 8:30 a.m. to 3:30 p.m. AGS is proud to present Craig Scott, a professional genealogical and historical researcher for more than twenty years specializing in the records of the National Archives, especially those that relate to the military. Among other credentials, he is on the Editorial Board of the National Genealogical Society and is Coordinator of the Military Records course in Institute of Genealogy and Historical Records. His seminar topics are Revoutionary War Records, the Indian War, the War of 1812, and the Mexican War. The registration form may be downloaded from http://algensoc.org/index.html, or you may contact ctucker@dbtech.net for additional information.

Editor's note: If you've never heard Craig speak, it's well worth the drive to Montgomery to hear him. Craig is both entertaining and informative!

The Vanished Downtown

Leah Rawls Atkins of The Birmingham News takes on a trip back downtown--the way it used to be. Even though this is an Alabama story, a lot of East Mississippians shopped in Birmingham on occasion and so many of us have memories just like this.

Alabama Records In Danger

Many Mississippians have Alabama ancestry. Because there are some records in danger of being destroyed in Tuscaloosa County, I wanted to alert Mississippi researchers to the problem.