• In commemoration of the sesquicentennial of the Civil War, the Civil War Trust, History, and the Center for Civil War Photography are calling for submissions to the 2013 Civil War Photo Contest. Amateur photographers age 13 and older can enter in five categories by uploading photos to the Civil War Trust’s Flickr page and tagging them for the correct category. The deadline is August 16.
  

You’ll find the rules and entry instructions here.

• FamilySearch has added more than 1.7 million index records and images to its free FamilySearch.org record search (click on the Search link at the top of the site). The records come from Austria, Brazil, China, Germany, Hungary, Italy, New Zealand, Poland, Ukraine, and the United States. You can see the full list of updates and click through to search or (for as-yet unindexed record images) browse here.
  

• Ancestry.com will hold an Ancestry Day in Las Vegas on Saturday, May 11 (the Saturday of next week’s National Genealogical Society conference in Vegas). Registration for Ancestry Day costs $25; you can register and view the program here. 

• If you’ll be across the country in Washington, DC, during May, look into attending one of the genealogy records workshops at the National Archives. Topics include Civil War court martial records (May 15), nonpopulation censuses (May 18), and a genealogy clinic (May 18). You’ll find details here (scroll down to May).
  

• Ancestry.co.uk (the British records sister site of Ancestry.com) is making its 1911 and 1901 British census records free this weekend. To view these records you will need to register for a free Ancestry.co.uk account.

• The Dublin (Ireland) City Library and Archive has posted a free database of more than 46,000 Dublin voters in 1908 (men 21 and older and women 30 and older). Learn more about these records at DublinHeritage.ie.

• Do you love finding out about people's heirlooms? Were you one of the thousands of people to attend the "Antiques Roadshow" taping in Cincinnati last summer? I was! The three episodes filmed here will be broadcast Mondays April 1, April 8 and April 15, at 8/7 central on PBS. 

• More Cincinnati news: The Public Library of Cincinnati and Hamilton County genealogy department has added two more volumes of its Sanborn Fire Insurance Maps to its free Virtual Library. Volumes 7 and 8, which cover Norwood and eastern neighborhoods in 1917, conclude the set that staff began digitizing four years ago. I've already made a note in my research log to dig further into this collection. View the maps here.

• Baseball fans, this one's for you: The National Archives has a free new ebook called Baseball: The National Pastime in the National Archives. It tells the story of baseball in America through documents, photos, audio, video and other records preserved at the archives. You'll find this and two more free e-books from the National Archives here.

• WikiTree, a free worldwide family tree website, has launched a new feature called Surname Following that lets you get updates when other WikiTree users post content related to names you're interested in. Log in to WikiTree and follow surnames to receive an email alert when related content is added to the WikiTree database or a related question, answer or comment is added to the WikiTree G2G (“Genealogist to Genealogist”) Q&A forum.

• Heads up: The early registration deadline is approaching for this year's National Genealogical Society annual conference, taking place May 8-11 in Las Vegas. You'll save $35 on your conference registration if you sign up before March 19. Click here to register.
  
  
• Speaking of conferences, registration is now open for the Federation of Genealogical Societies conference, Aug. 21-24 in Fort Wayne, Indiana (home of the well-known Allen County Public Library Genealogy Center). I'm hoping to be able to carve out some research time while there.
  

• FamilySearch has added 10.5 million indexed records and images to its free historical records search over the last two weeks, including 8,613,673 document images added to the New York Probate Records collection (1629 to 1971). Other notable collection updates are Brazil, Rio de Janeiro, Immigration Cards, 1900-1965, and Peru, Lima, Civil Registration, 1874-1996, collection.

Collections for Indonesia, Italy, New Zealand, and the US states of Minnesota and Ohio also have been updated. See more details and click through to the updated collections here.

• I got an email about a new iPhone/iPad app that helps you inventory family heirlooms. The $2.99 app, called Heirlooms, lets you store a photo of and information about an heirloom, and share it via an emailed attachment. A free version lets others read the attachment without having to buy the app.

• If you're up against a brick wall with some part of your genealogy research and you'll be in the Washington DC area on Saturday, March 16, the National Archives is holding a “Help! I'm Stuck” Genealogy Clinic. You can visit the Research Center main desk that day to sign up for a free, 20 minute consultation with an archivist between noon and 4 p.m. For details on this and other programs at teh archives, see the Archives.gov calendar.

• The University of Indianapolis is teaming up with Ancestry.com in a first-of-its-kind initiative to encourage its students to explore and reflect on how their family history impacts their identity. All UIndy students, faculty and staff have been granted access to all Ancestry.com content available from computers and mobile devices anywhere on campus, as well as to on-campus identity workshops and seminars.

• ScotlandsPeople Media Website has released Scottish Wills & Testaments from 1902 to 1925. The newly released records—totaling 392,595—offer insight of life in Scotland during the early 20th century and reach across all social classes, from famous industrialists/philanthropists such as Andrew Carnegie to the impoverished inmates of the nation's poorhouses. Check out Facts & Figures, Famous Scots and Interesting Stories.

• Family tree building wiki site WikiTree has released MatchBot, an automated matching tool that crawls the sites database checking for high-probability matches in the trees on the site. When it finds a match, it emails the tree managers with a match proposal. They can merge the profiles, create an "unmerged match" or reject the merge. Until now, members discovered such matches using traditional searches and the not-automated FindMatches tool.

• In a new blog series on Ancestry.com, the family of Rob and Kathy Brown and their five children are embarking on a family history journey in an RV decorated with Ancestry.com branding. The Browns will travel for six to nine months and more than 10,000 miles, through 42 states and 40 major cities, discovering the stories of their ancestors and blogging along the way. Read blog posts in the Great Ancestry Adventure series here and check out photos on Facebook here.

•  The National Archives of Ireland now includes a new genealogy-specific website. The following collections are freely available on the site: Census of Ireland, 1901 and 1911; Tithe Applotment Books, 1823-1837; and Soldiers' Wills, 1914-1917. More collections will launch in the near future.

• Mocavo, a genealogy search engine and now a growing records site, has added a free collection of about 17,000 high school and college yearbooks. The collection comprises nearly 3.5 million pages and stretching over 100 years of history.

• The Chronicling America free, searchable database of historic US newspapers, has posted its 5 millionth newspaper page. Launched by the Library of Congress and the National Endowment for the Humanities in 2007 as part of the National Digital Newspaper Program, the site digitizes newspapers published between 1836 and 1922. It now has more than 800 newspapers from 25 states. 
  

• Old Weather, a joint project from the National Archives and National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration, will have citizen scientists transcribing historic Arctic and worldwide weather data from digitized Navy, Coast Guard, and Revenue Cutter ship deck logs. Digital images of the logbooks will be available on the project's website and on Archives.gov. The records offer access to weather data and climate patterns from your ancestor's day, as well as details on US maritime history, military operations and scientific exploration. Learn more about the project and participate at OldWeather.org.
  

• A new volunteer genealogy lookup site called Gen Gathering has announced it's looking for volunteers to do simple lookups for others in their home libraries or nearby repositories or cemeteries. You also can use the site to find volunteers who might be able to do lookups for you.  Learn more on the Gen Gathering website. 

• A new Windows phone app called Relative History ($4.99) from Papillion Producitons lets you view genealogy information from GEDCOM files on Windows phones. You can learn more about it and see screenshots and reviews here.
  

• Congrats to D. Joshua Taylor who recently was elected to fill the two-year term as president of the Federation of Genealogical Societies (FYI: Josh is giving our Top 25 Tips for Discovering Your Colonial Ancestors webinar on Nov. 13). FGS board members and directors newly elected or re-elected are Lisa A. Alzo, David E. Rencher, Janice A. Fritsch, Cherie Bush, Kris W. Rzepczynski and Melissa Shimkus.

• Recent records updates to FamilySearch.org bring the site's free Slovakian records collection to more than 5 million searchable records. Plus, you can browse the Slovakia 1869 census on FamilySearch.org. Other record additions come from South Africa, Canada, Poland, Portugal and the United States.

Click here to see the updated collection and link to each on on FamilySearch.org.

• The National Archives and records Administration has posted videos of some of its most popular genealogy workshops on its YouTube channel. The videos, selected by researcher and NARA staff votes, cover NARA's Access to Archival Databases tool, Freedmen’s Bureau marriage records, National Archives Records on Ancestry.com and more. Click here to start watching the videos.
  
  
• Researchers from genealogy website findmypast.com have concluded that girls' names change in popularity much faster than boys' names do. According to their analysis of Social Security Administration records, the top 10 girls' names in 1940 have fallen in popularity rankings by more than 700 places. The top 10 boys' names in 1940 have fallen about 100 places. Three of the top 10 girls' names in 1940—Betty, Carol and Shirley—aren't even in today's top 1,000 names.
  
  You can read the entire press release on the GeneaPress website. 

• I wanted to point you to the Ancestry Insider's interesting post about indexing errors on 1940 census websites. The Ancestry Insider has seen more user complaints about Ancestry.com's index than FamilySearch's, and I'd have to echo that observation (mostly in blog comments and on Facebook). His post includes Ancestry.com's answers to questions about its indexing and auditing processes, and the index augmentation that helps users find records despite indexing difficulties.  

• Love family and food and home cooking? In her Genalogy Gems podcast episode 137, Lisa Louise Cooke interviews Gena Philibert Ortega about her new book From the Family Kitchen and how to dig into your family's food history. You'll find the podcast episode here on the Genealogy Gems website. See more of their interview in this video and take a peek at an old Toas-Tite sandiwsh toasting utensil here.

• This fall, the National Archives will open its new New York City location in Lower Manhattan, in the Alexander Hamilton US Custom House at One Bowling Green (the former facility was on Varick Street in Greenwich Village). The new location will expand the facilitiy's usefulness for research and education, with a welcome center, research center, learning center for school groups, exhibition space and public programs area. Read more about the new location here.

• Military records subscription site Fold3 has released a new collection of Navy Casualty Reports, 1776-1941, documenting deaths of US Navy personnel in wartime and in accidents outside of war.
  
  The casualty reports include records of those who were killed, injured, wounded, diseased or imprisoned, but most report only deaths.The records include four titles: Deaths Due to Enemy Action (includes deaths during the Civil War aboard the Cincinnati and in Andersonville prison, and more), Drowning Casualties (1885-1939), Lost and Wrecked Ships, Explosions and Steam Casualties (1801-1941), and Ordnance Accidents, Aviation Accidents, and Miscellaneous Records. This collection is currently free to search.

• British subscription genealogy site findmypast.co.uk announced it has added more than 2.2 million records in the past month, including parish baptism, marriage and burial records collections dating back to 1568 for Wales, East London, Sheffield/Yorkshire, Kent, Lincolnshire, Plymouth and West Devon. Search the records at findmypast.co.uk.

• Lisa Louise Cooke, our friend at Genealogy Gems and the host of the free Family Tree Magazine podcast, has a snazzy new website at www.genealogygems.com. The home page has links to popular parts of the site (such as podcasts, videos, the blog) and to Genealogy Gems news and tips. And for those of you already dreading the Nov. 1, 2013 end of iGoogle, Lisa recommends a replacement for your iGoogle home page.

• The National Archives Southeast regional facility in Atlanta is planning an exhibit and workshop on Ellis Island immigration records. The Ellis Island: The Lost Mural exhibit opens July 21 with a replica of a 1938 Works Progress Administration mural from the Ellis Island immigrants' dining hall, along with immigration documents and portraits of famous immigrants including Alfred Hitchcock, Greta Garbo, Alexander Graham Bell and others.
  
  A related genealogy records workshop with immigration records expert John Philip Colletta will be held Sat., Aug. 25, from 10 a.m. to 4 p.m. The fee is $20; call (770) 968-2555 if you're interested in attending.

• Ancestry.com updated its collection of U.S. Marine Corps Muster Rolls. This collection, which contains records from 1798 to 1958, now contains more than 39 million records. They include muster rolls (regular lists of those present in a given unit), unit diaries and personnel rosters.

• The New England Historic Genealogical Society announced that its Newbury Street Press title The Descendants of Judge John Lowell of Newburyport, Massachusetts, by Scott C. Steward and Christopher C. Child, has won two awards. The National Genealogical Society presented Child with its 2012 Award for Excellence: Genealogy and Family History Book. The Connecticut Society of Genealogists honored both authors with its 2012 Literary Award, Grand Prize for Genealogy.

• The National Archives at San Francisco has officially opened to the public more than 40,000 Alien Files or A-Files on immigrants to the United States. The case files were originally created at immigration offices in San Francisco; Honolulu; Reno, Nevada; Agana, Guam; American Samoa and other US territories. The records were transferred to the National Archives from US Citizenship and Immigration Services in 2009. Millions more A-files will eventually be opened to the public—the files are closed for 100 years after the birth date of the person named in the records.

A-Files created at other immigration offices are kept at the National Archives facility in Kansas City, where 300,000 cases were opened to the public in 2010. 

• A DNA study of Melungeons—a dark-skinned, mixed-heritage group historically residing in Appalachia—has found genetic evidence that these families descend from sub-Saharan African men and white women of northern or central European origin. Researchers think the population mixing could have happened among black and white indentured servants in mid-1600s Virginia.

According to an Associated Press article, the finding has been controversial among Melungeons, some of whom believe they have Portuguese or American Indian ancestry. Read more about the findings (and how researchers thinks the claims of Portuguese heritage arose) in this news article.

• Research Strategies: Using Land Records, a Family Tree Magazine article digital download from ShopFamilyTree.com
  
  
• Land Records Research Value Pack, a discounted package deal in ShopFamilyTree.com that includes the above Using Land Records article, our Land Records 101 Independent Study Course and two video classes on platting your ancestors' property.
  
  
• Land Records 101: Using Deeds, Plats, Patents and More, an instructor-led Family Tree University course that shows you how to do genealogy research in all types of land records 

• Ancestry.com: Record images for all US states and territories are available free, as are searchable name indexes for Delaware and Nevada. An index for Washington, DC, is "in process." A chart on the 1940 census page lets you see indexing progress.

• FamilySearch: Digitized records are available here for all US states and territories.

The name index for the state of Delaware is now completed and available to researchers. Search Delaware here.

You can use the map at FamilySearch's 1940 census site to see the indexing progress of the 1940 Census Community Project. The darker the state, the more records volunteers have indexed. The completed indexes will become searchable free on FamilySearch, as well as its commercial partners Archives.com and FindMyPast.com.

• MyHeritage: Records for all states and territories are available now for free, as is an index to all of Rhode Island. MyHeritage also has updated its mobile app so you can search 1940 census records from your iPhone, iPad or Android phone.

The 1940 census record images also are available on FamilyLink.com, which MyHeritage purchased last year. You'll need to register for a free account on the site (if you don't already have an account there) to view the records.

• National Archives: Records for all states and territories are available here for free.

• Ancestry.com : Record images for all US states and territories are available free, as are searchable name indexes for Delaware and Nevada. An index for Washington, DC, is coming soon.

• FamilySearch : Available record images are Alabama, California, Colorado, Delaware, Florida, Georgia, Illinois, Indiana, Kansas, Louisiana, Maryland, Minnesota, Mississippi, Missouri, Nevada, New Hampshire, New York, North Carolina, Oklahoma, Oregon, Pennsylvania, Texas, Utah, Virginia, Washington

You can use the map at FamilySearch's 1940 census site to see the indexing progress of the 1940 Census Community Project. The darker the state, the more records volunteers have indexed. The completed indexes will become searchable free on FamilySearch, as well as its commercial partners Archives.com and FindMyPast.com.

• MyHeritage : Records for all states and territories are available now for free, as is an index to all of Rhode Island.
  
  MyHeritage also has updated its mobile app so you can search 1940 census records from your iPhone, iPad or Android phone.

The 1940 census record images also are available on FamilyLink.com, which MyHeritage purchased last year. You'll need to register for a free account on the site (if you don't already have an account there) to view the records.

• National Archives : Records for all states and territories are available here for free.

The 705 survivors were taken aboard the Carpathia, which docked in New York City April 18. (I've seen sources numbering survivors anywhere from 700 to 710, but I most often found 705.)

Several parts of the world are observing the anniversary: Belfast, where Titanic was constructed; Southampton, England, whence she departed and home to most of her crew; Halifax, Nova Scotia, where the dead were transported and 150 victims rest; and the United States, where the ship was to dock in New York.

This is a great time to learn more about the Titanic and those on board, especially if a passenger or crew member is on your family tree. These are some of our favorite Titanic genealogy and history resources:

• Encyclopedia Titanica: Find lists of victims and survivors, crew, deck plans, research articles and more.

• Partial Manifest of Titanic Survivors: These manifests, completed on the Carpathia, name survivors from second- and third-class cabins.

• Sinking the Myths: Get the truth behind Titanic legends, including the “unsinkable” claim.

• RMS Titanic: The companion website to traveling artifact exhibitions is from the company that has conducted seven research expeditions to the site of the disaster.

• Sinking of the RMS Titanic: Get a play-by-play of the disaster, including iceberg warnings that never made it to Titanic’s bridge.

• Titanic in Nova Scotia: Read about passenger burials in three Halifax cemeteries.

• Titanic Stories: Learn about the ship’s construction in Belfast.

• Ancestry.com RMS Titanic records: This subscription sites have added Titanic fatality reports from the Halifax Coroner, a Titanic graves list, Titanic outward passengers, deaths at sea, and crew records. Better yet, the Titanic records are free through April 15.

• FindMyPast.co.uk Titanic records: This British subscription/pay-per-view site recently published a collection of maritime birth, marriage and death records, which name Titanic crew members and passengers who died at sea. Also new are the White Star Line officers' books containing service records of officers and commanders on the Titanic and other White Star Line vessels.

FamilySearch: Available record images are:

• Alabama
• Colorado
• Delaware
• Florida
• Kansas
• Louisiana
• Minnesota
• Mississippi
• New Hampshire
• Oklahoma
• Oregon
• Pennsylvania
• Texas
• Virginia

MyHeritage: Records for all states and territories are available now, as is an index to Bristol County, RI

National Archives: Records for all states and territories are available.

Check ShopFamilyTree.com for books, article downloads, online classes and CDs on how to research your genealogy in census records. Enjoy looking for your 1940 ancestors this weekend!

The site has almost finished uploading records for the states, predicting completion this morning. At this time, Ancestry.com has record images for all states and US territories except Arkansas, Louisiana, Maryland, Minnesota, Mississippi, Puerto Rico and South Carolina.

FamilySearch:

FamilySearch has added a color-coded map showing its progress. Hovering over a state highlights the records-posting and indexing progress for each state (if nothing happens when you hover, try a different browser). On the map, Texas shows as "records unavailable," but they are online at FamilySearch, at least for the counties I tried.

• Alabama
• Colorado
• Delaware
• Florida
• Kansas
• Louisiana
• Mississippi
• New Hampshire
• Oklahoma
• Oregon
• Pennsylvania
• Texas
• Virginia

MyHeritage:

Records for all states are available here, as is an index to Bristol County, RI

National Archives:

All states are available.

• Complete: Alabama, American Samoa, Arizona, California, Colorado, Connecticut, Delaware, District of Columbia, Florida, Georgia, Guam, Hawaii, Illinois, Indiana, Kansas, Kentucky, Maine, Massachusetts, Missouri, Montana, Nebraska, Nevada, New Hampshire, New Jersey, New Mexico, New York, North Carolina, Ohio, Oklahoma, Oregon, Panama Canal Zone, Pennsylvania, Rhode Island, South Dakota, Tennessee, Texas, Utah, Vermont, Virgin Islands, Virginia, Washington, West Virginia, Wisconsin, Wyoming
  
  
• Almost complete: Alaska, Arkansas, Idaho, Iowa, Mississippi, North Dakota
  
  
• Next up: Maryland, Minnesota, Puerto Rico, South Carolina

• Alabama
• Colorado
• Delaware
• Florida
• Kansas
• Louisiana
• Mississippi
• Oklahoma
• Oregon
• Pennsylvania
• Virginia

National Archives: all states available

These statistics, which Archives.com made nice and pretty for you, explain why:

• Complete: Alabama, American Samoa, California, Colorado, Delaware, District of Columbia, Georgia, Guam, Indiana, Kansas, Kentucky, Maine, Massachusetts, Missuori, Nebraska, Nevada, New York, North Carolina, Ohio, Oklahoma, Oregon, Panama Canal Zone, Pennsylvania, Rhode Island, Tennessee, Texas, Vermont, Virgin Islands, Virginia, Washington, Wyoming
  
  
• Almost complete: Illinois, West Virginia
  
  
• Next up: Arizona, Connecticut, Florida, Hawaii, Michigan, Montana, New Hampshire, New Jersey, New Mexico, South Dakota, Utah, Wisconsin

• Alabama
• Colorado
• Delaware
• Florida
• Kansas
• Louisiana
• Mississippi
• Oklahoma
• Oregon
• Virginia

FamilySearch also reported that 1940 Census Community Project volunteer indexers have finished indexing records for Delaware; the index is being processed (it's not yet on the site).

MyHeritage: Records for all states are available now, as is a name index to Bristol County, RI

National Archives: Records for all states are available

• Complete: American Samoa, California, Delaware, District of Columbia, Guam, Indiana, Maine, Nevada, New York, North Carolina, Ohio, Panama Canal Zone, Pennsylvania, Rhode Island, Tennessee, Texas, Virgin Islands, Virginia, Washington
• Almost complete: Kansas, Nebraska
• Next up: Alabama, Colorado, Georgia, Kentucky, Nebraska, Oregon, Vermont

FamilySearch:

• Alabama
• Colorado
• Delaware
• Florida
• Kansas
• Oklahoma
• Oregon
• Virginia

MyHeritage: all states available

National Archives: all states available

1940 census record images for the entire United States are at 1940Census.Archives.gov. Here's where else to look for records from your ancestral states:

Ancestry.com :

• Complete: American Samoa, Delaware, District of Columbia, Guam, Indiana, Maine, Nevada, Panama Canal Zone, Rhode Island, Virgin Islands
• Almost complete: California, New York, Ohio, Pennsylvania, Tennessee, Texas, Virginia, Washington
• Next up: Alabama, Colorado, Georgia, Kansas, Kentucky, Nebraska, North Carolina, Oregon & Vermont.

FamilySearch :

• Alabama
• Colorado
• Delaware
• Florida
• Kansas
• Oregon
• Virginia

MyHeritage :

• California
• Illinois
• Massachusetts
• Maine
• Michigan
• Missouri
• Nevada
• New Jersey
• New York
• Pennsylvania
• Rhode Island (an index for Bristol County, RI, is available)
• Texas
• Virginia
• Wyoming

Ancestry.com:

• American Samoa
• California
• Delaware
• DC
• Guam
• Indiana
• Maine
• Nevada
• New York
• Ohio
• Panama Canal
• Pennsylvania
• Rhode Island
• Tennessee
• Texas
• Virgin Islands
• Virginia
• Washington

FamilySearch:

• Colorado
• Delaware
• Kansas
• Oregon
• Virginia

MyHeritage.com: I can't find an at-a-glance list here. You'll see all states in the search dropdown menu, and when you search on one that's not yet available, you'll get results but with a "coming soon" message. Update: The folks at MyHeritage sent me this list of available records, with more coming soon:

• California
• Illinois
  
• Massachusetts
• Maine
• Michigan
• New Jersey
• New York
• Nevada
• Pennsylvania
• Rhode Island
• Texas
• Virginia

"As the National Archives and Records Administration's (NARA) official development partner on this project, Archives.com is responsible for the website performance and stability. We take full responsibility for the technical issues that have occurred and are very sorry for the inconvenience you may have experienced."

After waiting for 10 years for the release of the 1940 census, we know that you are frustrated with the difficulties we're experiencing on our 1940census.archives.gov site. We completely share these frustrations! Since 9 a.m. EDT (when the site went live), we've had about 22.5 million hits to the site, which works out ...to about 1.9 million users. Although we developed detailed plans and our testing indicated that NARA and Inflection would be able to handle the expected load,the number of visitors was huge. Thank you for your patience despite these frustrations. We're working to resolve the problem and we'll keep you updated on the situation.

• The National Archives and Records Administration (NARA) announced the official release of the census at 1940Census.Archives.gov, which took place after a ceremony at the archives' Washington, DC., location. The 3.9 million images constitute the largest collection of digital information NARA has ever released.
  
  NARA also announced it has "joined a consortium of groups to create a name-based index." That's the 1940 Census Community Project, led by FamilySearch and two commercial organizations, Archives.com (which designed NARA's 1940 census website) and brightsolid. Interesting. At least two other commercial entities—Ancestry.com and MyHeritage—are creating their own census databases which also will be free (at least through 2013) and will compete with the FamilySearch/Archives.com/brightsolid version.

• The 1940 Census Community Project put out another call today for volunteers to help create a free index to the 1940 census. This index will become searchable on FamilySearch, Archives.com and FindMyPast.com (owned by brightsolid). Go to the1940Census.com to participate.

• The 1940 census is of intense interest to people besides genealogists. Ancestry.com will work with the Minnesota Population Center at the University of Minnesota to make data from the 1940 census available to the scientific community. This research database—separate from the one genealogists will search to find their ancestors—will include all of the information collected on the 132 million Americans recorded in the 1940 census.
  
  Scientific researchers will be able to link recent economic and health surveys and mortality records to the 1940 database. This will allow researchers to study the impact of early life conditions, including socioeconomic status, parental education, and family structure, on later health and mortality. In addition to individual and family information, the database will provide contextual information on childhood neighborhood characteristics, labor-market conditions, and environmental conditions.

So far this morning, we're hearing from a lot of disappointed folks on Facebook and Twitter who aren't able to get record images to load for the 1940 census.

I'm in the same boat, but I took some screen shots from the site to show you how 1940Census.Archives.gov works:

The home page looks like this:

Click Get Started, then scroll down a little and you get three choices:

Search by location; search by enumeration district (ED), which also lets you convert the 1930 ED to the 1940 one; or access Help features (FAQs, etc.)

Search by ED

If you know the ED, look at the middle option, choose the state and type in the ED.

You could click the maps tab to see the ED on a map, or click the Census Schedule tab to see the available schedules for that district.

Click on the census schedule thumbnail to see the pages for that district (theoretically—they never loaded for me) and browse through them for your family. 

If you hover over the thumbnail image, you get an option to download images, which some say works better, but the images never downloaded for me.

Search by location

If you know your family's location, but not the ED, look under "Do you know where the person lived?" and click Start Your Search.

On the left side of the next page, choose the state, county, city and street, if you know it. 

Your results will show descriptions of EDs covering that area.

You can view the descriptions and choose the one you think has your ancestor's household (use the Maps tab to see them on a map), or click the Census Schedules tab to start going through the schedules. 

It's pretty frustrating to wait and wait for census images to load, espcially after all the hype, but honestly I'm not surprised.

I'm going to try again in another couple of hours (or maybe tomorrow, depending how the day goes). While you're waiting, visit Family Tree Magazine's 1940 census page to formulate your research game plan and learn how to find those enumeration districts.

Also check whether Ancestry.com, FamilySearch,FindMyPast.com or MyHeritage has uploaded records for your ancestor's state.

• Available (though I'm not sure whether all records have been uploaded for these states): Colorado, Delaware, Virginia, Kansas, Virginia, Oregon
  

• Completed: Nevada, Delaware, District of Columbia, Guam, American Samoa, Indiana, Maine, Panama Canal Zone, Rhode Island, and the Virgin Islands
• In process: California, New York, Pennsylvania, Virginia

If you’re on Twitter, go to the early bird tweet-up beforehand, where you can meet the ceremony speakers and chat with a genealogy expert. RSVP to 1940census@archives.gov.

The archives also is hosting and participating in 1940 census workshops across the country. View the Washington DC events schedule here, and events around the country here and here.

Libraries and genealogical societies all over the United States are holding their own workshops to help you find ancestors in the 1940 census. Here's a sampling—check library and society websites for classes near you:

• Alabama: At the Birmingham Public Library Central Branch, you can attend 40 is the New 30: Using the 1940 Census, April 21 at 10 a.m. Registration costs $5.

• California: Live it up in Oakland at a 1940 Census Party, organized by the African-American Genealogical Society of Northern California, the California Genealogical Society and Library, and the Oakland Family History Center. The event is April 9, 2012, from 2 to 8 p.m. at the Oakland Family History Center. Learn more an d register here.

• Indiana: The Indiana State Library will hold a Clues to Researching the 1940 Census workshop Saturday, May 19, from 10 to 11 a.m. in the History Reference Room.

The Allen County, Ind., public library is holding Introduction to the 1940 Census workshops April 2 at 2:30 p.m. and April 7 at 10 a.m. Get more details on the library's events calendar.

• Ohio: The Public Library of Cincinnati and Hamilton County will present the 1940 Census Is Here: Techniques for Achieving Top Search Results with Genealogy and Local History Department Manager Patricia Van Skaik. The program takes place Saturday, April 7 at 2 p.m.

• New York: The Broome County, NY, public library is holding a Finding Your Relatives in the 1940 Census workshop April 11 from 6 to 8 p.m.

Attend Searching for your ancestors in the 1940 Federal Census April Thursday, April 12, at 3:15 at the New York Public Library in New York City.

• South Carolina: The South Carolina State Library in Columbia will host a free workshop about the 1940 census on Friday, April 20, 10 a.m. to noon.

• Tennessee: On April 14, the Tennessee State Library and Archives in Nashville will host a seminar on the 1940 census April 14 from 9:30 to 11 a.m. It's free, but reservations are required due to limited seating availability. Click here for contact information.

• Online Census Secrets on-demand webinar: Learn strategies for finding ancestors in online collections of censusrecords, 1790 through 1940.
  
  
• Finding Ancestors in the US Census: Online and Offline Research Strategies Family Tree University course
  

• Our free 1940 census video class, which shows you how to find your ancestors' 1940 enumeration districts. Find the class and other 1940 census tips on FamilyTreeMagazine.com.

You can contribute to transcriptions and help make historical documents more accessible to the public.

The pilot project includes more than 300 documents (about 1,000 pages) dating from the late 18th to the 20th century: letters to a civil war spy, fugitive slave case files, suffrage petitions and more. All are digitized in NARA's online catalog; the transcriptions will make them text-searchable.

Just a few of the interesting documents I saw were

• George Summers Letter on Confederate War Prisoners
• the petition of Jacob Cook in a Fugitive Slave Petition Book from the District Court for the District of Maryland
• an 1866 contract between "James Mitchell and Dick and Wife" from the Freedmen's Bureau
• Ann Taylor v. Thomas Hart indenture case file from 1773.

If you want to learn more about a document, you can click on the title, then look for the National Archives Indentifier number and click on that.

You can search for documents to transcribe or browse them by difficulty level (beginner, intermediate or advanced), year it was created, and the status of transcription (“Not Yet Started,” “Partially Transcribed” or “Completed”). 

If you want to participate, see the project's Transcription Tips, Frequently Asked Questions and Policy pages.

The Citizen Archivist Dashboard also offers opportunities to tag images and records, upload photos of records and contribute to online articles.

• PBS' Winter-Spring 2012 lineup includes a 10-episode celebrity genealogy series called "Finding Your Roots With Henry Louis Gates Jr." premiering Sunday, March 25 at 8 p.m.
  

Gates will delve into the genealogy and genetics of famous Americans including Kevin Bacon, Robert Downey, Jr., Branford Marsalis, John Legend, Martha Stewart, Barbara Walters and Rick Warren. The show's website is here, though is hasn't yet been fleshed out with any content.

• A few updates to the genealogy web search engine Mocavo.com: You can now upload files to your account using Dropbox; just follow these instructions on the Mocavo.com blog. Also, if you log in before you search, you can mark off Mocavo.com search results you've already looked at with an "I've Read This" button, and you can rank matches as “The Person I’m Looking For," “Maybe A Good Match," “Not Who I’m Looking For” and “Broken Link.”
  

Finally, the site has introduced Mocavo Plus, an advanced version the site's developer says will get you more-relevant matches with features such as wild card searching, date-range searching, GeoSearching (in the US) and more. Subscriptions cost $9.95 per month or $79.95 (a sale price) per year.

• The California State Genealogical Alliance (CGSA) has started two new blogs: the CSGA Blog, with a goal to keep the California Genealogical community informed, and the Csgacopyright blog, which helps the genealogical community understand copyright issues. Learn more about the CGSA on the organization's website.

• The National Archives and Records Administration has launched "Know Your Records" online videos from the popular genealogy how-to workshops hosted at its facilities on topics such as such as census, immigration and military records. Catch the videos on the archives' YouTube channel.

• The New England Historic Genealogical Society (NEHGS) announced its schedule of upcoming workshops at its Boston research library. If you'll be in the area, you can learn about the library's resources, local history, researching African-American ancestors and more (NEHGS also is organizing a research trip to Belfast in May). Check out the schedule on the AmericanAncestors.org website.
  

• Genetic testing site 23andme, which provides test-takers with medical- and ancestry-related analyses, has generated some controversy in changing site policies. Now, those who let their 12-month subscriptions lapse will lose access to their Relative Finder matches, Health Reports and other features that rely on their genetic data. They'll still have access to the raw data. Read more about the controversy on the Your Genetic Genealogist blog.

Researchers will be able to browse, view, and download images from the 1940 census. See NARA's full announcement here.

To kick off the partnership, Archives.com has created a web page about the launch of the 1940 Census.

You won't be able to search the census by name right away on April 2; instead, you'll need to know the enumeration district (ED) your relatives lived in and then browse the records for that district. You can find the ED if you know your ancestor's address in 1940 or in 1930.

Here's a post about an online tool that can help you determine the ED.

FamilySearch is heading up an effort to index the 1940 census records ASAP after they're released, which will let genealogists search by name.

Subscription website Ancestry.com also has announced plans to provide the 1940 census for free, at least through 2013.

• If you're interested in researching a military ancestor, check out the National Archives' new video short on how veterans and other interested parties can obtain copies of service records. It'll also show you inside the new National Personnel Records Center in St. Louis, where many veterans' records are stored. (You'll also find veterans' records—particularly those from earlier wars—in the archives' DC-area facilities—see the November 2008 Family Tree Magazine "Operation Online Records" article for more info.)

• New military records at UK genealogy subscription/pay-per-view site Genes Reunited today include the National Roll of the Great War 1914-1918, which has brief soldier biographies and information on support personnel (such as nurses and civilians), 1861 Worldwide Army Index, De Ruvigny’s Roll of Honour and more. You can see what's in Genes Reunite's military collection and search the records here.

• Another UK genealogy subscription site, FindMyPast.co.uk, has added a collection of records from the Cheshire Archives and Local Studies. They include workhouse records, parish registers, bishop’s transcripts and electoral registers spanning more 350 years. Search the Cheshire Collection here.

• The New York Genealogical and Biographical Society (NYG&B) has a new website that's easier to use and enriched with expanded content. Additions to the eLibrary (accessible to members) include more than 500 NYG&B member biographies from the early 20th century, book two of the 1855 New York state census for Manhattan's Ward 17, 32 digitized books and more. Information also accessible t nonmembers includes research guides, News You Can Use with new resources for New York research and a Genealogical Exchange query board.

• Fort Monroe in Hampton, Va., an important Union fort in the Civil War, has been designated a National Monument. It was nicknamed "Freedom's Fortress" for Maj. Gen. Benjamin Butler’s 1861 declaration that escaped slaves who reached Union lines would be deemed contraband of war and not returned to their masters. More than 10,000 enslaved men and women made the journey there by war's end. Learn about Fort Monroe during the Civil War here.

• The National Archives in Kansas City is offering these free genealogy workshops in November: Military Records at the National Archives Nov. 12, 10-11:30 a.m.; and Introduction to Genealogy Nov. 15 and 30, 10-11:30 a.m. You can find more details on the archives' Public Programs schedule.

• The National Archives NARAtions blog has a helpful post today for browsing 1940 census records (set for release in April 2012). When people weren’t home during the censustaker’s first pass, or were living in a hotel or other temporary location, enumerators would list them on separate pages. You’ll find these pages at the end of the records for that enumeration district. So if you’re browsing for your ancestors and don’t find them, be sure to check the last pages of records for that district.

• More from the National Archives: The official dedication of this National Archives and Records Administration’s new National Personnel Records Center at 1 Archives Drive north of St. Louis, Mo., will take place Saturday, Oct. 15, at 10 a.m. Read more about the new NPRC here. 

• And still more: You now can get the archives’ lesson plans, Presidential Libraries' podcasts and more through iTunes U. (iTunesU is part of the iTunes store that lets you access thousands of free lectures, videos, books and podcasts from institutions all over the world.) Right now, there’s a selection of World War II films, Presidential historical documents and podcasts, and several "Inside the Vaults" videos.

• British subscription site Findmypast.co.uk published 1.3 million Manchester family history records in the Manchester Collection.
  

The records, provided by Manchester City Council's Libraries, Information and Archives, include prison registers (1847-1881), industrial school admission and discharge registers (about 1866-1912), school admission registers (about 1870-1916), apprentice records (1700-1849), baptism and birth registers (1734-1920), cemetery and death records (1750-1968), marriage registers (1734-1808) and workhouse registers.

• JSTOR, a service providing digitized academic journals through libraries, is making articles published prior to 1923 in the United States and 1870 elsewhere free to anyone. This includes nearly 500,000 articles from more than 200 journals, about 6 percent of JSTOR’s total content. This web page has more information. You can start searching here. To just see the free stuff, make sure the “Include only content I can access” box is checked.

My search on Civil War and Missouri, for example, resulted in matches including “Reminiscences of the Civil War” by Richard Taylor in the University of Iowa’s Jan./Feb. 1878 North American Review. (Thanks to Sharon DeBartolo Carmack for the heads-up about this service.)

• The National Archives will break ground for its new Denver-area facility on Tuesday, Sept. 27. The new facility will house the archives’ Denver-area research services, including a Federal Records Center, research rooms and event space. Read more about the groundbreaking and the facility on NARA’s website. 

• New records on FamilySearch.org this week come from US states including California, Louisiana, Maine, Mississippi, New York, Oregon and Vermont, as well as Mexico, Canada, the Czech Republic and elsewhere. See the full list of additions and link to the collections here. Remember that not all of these collections are indexed, so you may need to browse. 

• The New England Historic Genealogical Society is releasing the seventh and final volume of Robert Charles Anderson’s Great Migration Series: Immigrants to New England 1634—1635. (This latest volume includes all immigrants whose surnames start with T through Y.) It’s available now at GreatMigration.org. The Great Migration series includes a total of 10 volumes; three for the years 1620 to 1633, and seven volumes for 1634 to 1635. You also can subscribe to the GreatMigration.org website to get online or quarterly newsletters.

Hurricane Irene makes it a double whammy for NARA’s Washington, DC, -area facilities, and archives along the East Coast are in the storm’s projected path. Keep tabs on closures at NARA facilities by checking its operating status page and Facebook pages. In the DC area, call 301-837-0700.

Here's NARA’s emergency preparedness page, which also includes information on dealing with water-logged photos and documents after a disaster. Our thought are with those who live in the area—be safe. 

• Stanford University has put together a cool visual timeline of US newspaper publication from 1690 to today, using data from the Library of Congress Chronicling America newspaper directory. The map shows where newspapers were published during various years and eras, with different-sized and –colored city or town markers to indicate the number of papers published there and foreign-language newspapers. Click on a marker and the names of papers published there appear below the map.

Here’s more information on our blog about Chronicling America. Genealogy expert Timothy Pinnick recommended the site as a resource for finding African-American newspapers in our February 2011 podcast. 

• If you’re escaping the heat inside tonight and wondering what to do, give GeneaBloggers Radio a listen. The weekly Friday night internet radio show, hosted by Thomas MacEntee, starts at 10pm EDT, 9pm CDT, 8pm MDT, and 7pm PDT. Tonight’s episode is about capturing your personal family history. Click here to learn more about it and tune in. 

• Tomorrow, July 30, the National Archives’ College Park, MD, research rooms will be closed due to construction. 
  

• Traveling to the National Archives in Washington, DC, in September? Look into attending the archives’ genealogy programs on Freedom of Information Act requests (Sept. 6), military records (Sept. 7), census searching strategies (Sept. 10) and more. On Sept. 10 from noon to 4 pm, you can make a 20 minute appointment with an archivist for individual help. See the list of September programs and descriptions here.
  

• The Southern California Genealogical Society Jamboree is going on now in Burbank, Calif. Visit the Geneabloggers blog for links to the latest blog posts and tweets about the conference. 

• GenDetective , a trip-planning and reporting tool for genealogists (see our initial report about GenDetective here), is now available for download as a 10-day free trial or for purchase. 

• The Red Star Line Museum (set to open in 2013) and its hometown of Antwerp, Belgium, are trying to identify a young passenger in one of the museum’s photographs. The "Do You Know This Girl?"campaign has a blog, Facebook page and a contest you can enter to win a trip for two to Belgium. See the mystery photo and learn more about the "Do You Know This Girl?" campaign here. 

• The National Archives is holding a “I Found it in the National Archives” contest from now until Aug. 9. Just submit an essay or video about an important document you discovered at a National Archives facility. See how to enter and get the contest rules on Archives.gov. 

• Ancestry.com and the Allen County (Ind.) Public Library Genealogy Center are holding an Ancestry Day genealogy fair in Fort Wayne, Ind., July 22-23. You can consult with experts from Ancestry.com and attend classes on using the site. Registration costs $20. Learn more on the Genealogy Center’s blog. 

• Manassas, Va., is commemorating the 150th anniversary of the First Battle of Manassas (also called Bull Run) with an event July 21-24 featuring battle re-enactments, living history demonstrations and more, including an appearance by Patrick Gorman (Confederate Gen. John Bell Hood in the 2003 film Gods and Generals). Learn more and purchase tickets at ManassasCivilWar.org. 

Start by following @AskArchivists on Twitter (you'll need a Twitter account, of course). Then on June 9, tweet your question and include the hashtag #AskArchivists. You can direct your question to any archivist who’s joining in, or to a specific participating archive—for example, including @USNatArchives in your tweet directs your question to the US National Archives.

Participating archives in the United States and Canada are listed here (the list is still growing). So far, they include the National Archives, Library of Congress, New York Public Library, North Carolina State Archives, Association des archivistes du Québec, Nova Scotia Archives and Records Management, plus many college and university libraries.

Get more Ask Archivists Day details on the Ask Archivists blog, and of course, by following @AskArchivists on Twitter.

• We’re hearing there's great attendance at this year’s conference, and that the first two days in the exhibit hall were crowded.
  

• The 2012 NGS conference is May 9-12 in Cincinnati (also the hometown of Family Tree Magazine) and the 2013 conference will be in Las Vegas.

• FamilySearch has set an annual goal to add 200 million record images to its free online records search. Its 2012 RootsTech conference will be Feb. 2-4 in Salt Lake City.

• Archivist of the United States David Ferrerio, speaking at the NGS opening session, said that the National Archives and Records Administration (NARA) is digitizing the 1940 census in-house and it’ll be available—but not yet indexed by name—on on NARA's website April 2, 2012. It won’t be on any commercial websites on that date.

• Ancestry.com will begin indexing the census records as soon as they’re available and will post the indexed records online later in the year, the company announced at a conference reception.
  

Dick Eastman has posted his copious notes from the reception. Some things that caught my eye: the new genealogy Web Search, US Navy Ship Muster Rolls 1939-1949 (coming on Memorial Day), more US birth and death records, a faster record image viewer, a new Android app, and the ability to download data from your Ancestry tree to version 2012 Family Tree Maker software.

• See this GeneaBloggers post for the latest NGS-related tweets and blog posts.
  

• As part of its annual conference next week in Charleston, SC, the National Genealogical Society will offer a one-day Genealogy 101 session on Saturday, May 14, from 9:30 a.m. to 4:30 p.m. Registration costs $50. Online registration is closed, but you can register at the door. Space is limited, so get there early.

• A new organization has formed with the goal to provide in-depth genealogical education in the Mid-Atlantic region and nationally. The Genealogical Research Institute of Pittsburgh (GRIP) is planning a weeklong genealogy seminar for Monday, July 23 through Friday, July 27, 2012, in Pittsburgh. Learn more on GRIP’s website.

• If you’ll be in the Washington, DC, are next week, you can learn how to research the National Archives’ records of Union and Confederate Army units and Navy ships at one of two free workshops: May 10, 11 a.m. at the Washington, DC, Research Center; or Thursday, May 12, 11 a.m. at the College Park, MD, research center. Learn more on the National Archives’ events page. 

• FamilySearch has added more than 2 million digital images to its record collections come from Brazil, Chile, El Salvador, Honduras, Mexico, Switzerland, U.S., and Wales. More than 1.7 million of those images were added to the Brazil Civil Registration collection, and 346,000 church records were added for Honduras. The record images aren’t yet indexed, so you’ll need to navigate to the collection of interest on FamilySearch and browse the images. You can see the list of updated collections and link to each one here. 

The Civil War Trust is coming out with another smartphone “Battle App,” this one helping tourists locate and learn about historic sites at the Fredericksburg battlefield. Download and learn more about this app and the Devil’s Den & Little Roundtop app at CivilWar.org.

Want to attend the Southern California Genealogical Society Jamboree in Burbank, Calif., June 10-12? You could win a registration from GeneaBloggers. Click here to learn more and enter. 

• The Civil War Preservation Trust, a battlefield preservation group, has shortened its name to the Civil War Trust and adopted a new logo. President James Lighthizer explains the changes will “modernize our image to better reflect the Civil War Trust’s mission.” See the new logo and read more about the change here. 

• The University of Texas at Austin has launched a new history website called Not Even Past to provide “dynamic, accessible, short articles on every field of history.” Using the Read, Watch, Discover, Listen and Texas links at the bottom of the page, you’ll find book excerpts and articles from history faculty and graduate students at the university. Content is sparse so far, but this could be a site worth keeping an eye on.

• If you have an ancestor who served during the Korean War (especially a veteran whose personnel file was destroyed in the 1973 fire at the National Personnel Records Center in St. Louis), today’s Family Tree Friday post on the NARAtions blog might be of interest. The post describes Korean War-era Command Reports, which include reports, operations journals, staff studies and other documents from Army commands, staffs and units, and can help you learn about the activities of your relative’s Korean War unit.

• The nation’s largest online digitized presidential archive will provide access to papers, records, photos and recordings of President John F. Kennedy's time in office. Visit the website of the John F. Kennedy Presidential Library and Museum to learn more about the digitization effort and search the archive. View the announcement about the archive here.
  

The National Archives and Records Administration (NARA) is inviting you to have a say about what it’ll be like to research the 2010 census records in the future.

NARA is asking for public comment on the Appraisal and Records schedule for the census. These schedules list all the records created during Census 2010—not just the census forms you filled out, but also address canvassing maps, data summaries, various publications and more—and proposes standards for their retention or disposition.

For those records proposed for permanent retention, the schedule contains instructions for their transfer to NARA. For records are proposed for temporary retention, the schedule contains instructions for their later disposal.

The proposed schedule provides that the 2010 decennial census forms we all filled out will be preserved in the form of scanned images. (You can read about the archives’ preservation of digital images here.) It calls for those and other “permanently valuable” records to be transferred to NARA within 10 years after the census.

For more information and to link to the Appraisal and Records schedule, see this post on the archives’ NARAtions blog.

The documents are lengthy. You can get a summary of many of the documents proposed for preservation on the archives’ Records Express blog. 

Comments and questions regarding the proposed retention/disposition of records are being accepted on both of the above-mentioned blog posts through Dec. 30.

You can preview the new site now at <archives.gov/open/redesign/preview> (click on the image for the new site). Note that the search on the preview site won’t work.

NARA developed the new site with help from users through surveys, voting, card sorts (a way of figuring out how users would organize the site) and usability testing. It’ll feature:

• A new home page, selected by public vote in July

• A new interactive map of NARA’s facilities nationwide

• Historical documents and streamlined access to military service records (turns out that 81 percent of Archives.gov visitors are looking for this information)

• Topically organized sections focused on the needs of both casual browsers and professional researchers (the current site divides articles for genealogists, researchers, members of the general public, etc., leading to multiple sections on the same topic)

• Easy links to NARA's social media sites, including Facebook, Twitter, Flickr, YouTube and blogs.

Read more about the redesign process on NARA’s website.

• British genealogy subscription site FindMyPast.co.uk has released a collection of records from the Second Anglo-Boer Warincluding details on 260,000 British service members and 59,000 war casualties. The database compiles information from more than 330 sources, and resolves errors and conflicting information in some of those sources. The war was fought from 1899 to 1902 between the British Empire and the Dutch-speaking inhabitants of the South African Republic (Transvaal Republic) and the Orange Free State.

• The latest records added to the free FamilySearch Beta site include census records from Ghana (1982 to 1984) and Norway (1875), plus the Minnesota state census (1865 and 1905) and marriage records from Arkansas (1837 to 1957) and Idaho (1864 to 1950). You can see the full list of new records here. 

• The Troy (NY) Irish Genealogical Society has posted the records of Italian midwife Alesandra Matera, who practiced in the Troy area during the early 1900s. The transcribed records span 1909 to 1923 and document mostly Italian births, with some Syrians in later years. You can download the transcriptions as PDFs ordered by the father’s, mother’s or child’s last name (the transcriptions themselves are in chronological order, but you can use the Bookmarks bar in your PDF viewer to see the names in alphabetical order). Originals are in the archives of the Rensselaer County Historical Society.

• The International Society of Family History Writers and Editors (ISFHWE) 2011 writing competition is open to members and—for the first time—non-members of ISFHWE this year. Entries are due by Dec. 31, 2010, and you’ll get a discount on the entry fee for submissions made before November 30, 2010. See the categories, judging guidelines, rules and entry form on ISFHWE’s website.
  

• The River Raisin National Battlefield Park in Monroe, Mich., site of the War of 1812 Battle of Frenchtown, has officially become the 393rd park in the National Park System. You can learn more about the site on the National Park Service website and at RiverRaisinBattlefield.org. 

• The National Archives and Records Administration’s National Personnel Records Center (NPRC) in St. Louis will relocate to a modernized $112 million facility in North St. Louis County. It’ll take about 17 months to move the 100 million-plus records and 800 workers starting in May 2011. NPRC houses personnel records of civilian federal employees, as well as military service members after about World War I.