Do you like to do research in your home in your pajamas fantastic you need to
learn about Internet Archive
howdy I'm Devon Noel Lee with family history fanatics and we're here with Dan
Earl the family history guy and he's going to tell us some tips on how to
research in the Internet Archive which we can do in our pajamas or not yeah so
the first thing I would recommend for everybody is that you sign up for an
account the account is free everything on the internet archive is free but that
free account is going to allow you to save favorites it's going to allow you
to check out ebooks that they have as a part of their collection that you can't
do without that free account so that free count is a fantastic feature that
allows you to do all of those things and plus a lot of other stuff and you can
upload things you can recommend websites to be archived it's just a fantastic
simple free thing to do you know that wasn't new to me I didn't know about the
saving the ebooks and checking it out that way so hey you just learned
something new okay that's another tip you have okay the second tip that I have
is if you're going to be downloading a book right because they have lots of
stuff that you can download text wise make sure you download the full color
version of the PDF why is that because sometimes when we download things in
black and white the there's little nuances of things and if it doesn't get
caught just right it makes it difficult to see so when we see it in full color
it's much easier to read that is a great tip that's why we're talking to him
alright then the third one is before you search through the texts because you can
search within each text within the Internet Archive is to go onto Google
and look for an optical character recognition exchange guide because what
happens is when they use the computers to to digitize that and they read it a
see with the fleck of dust in the middle suddenly becomes the letter e so you're
Karl becomes an earl and not that that's a bad thing but
it's not who you're looking for it may not come up so if you have that cheat
sheet with you then you're searching for something and you don't get the results
you're expecting you can start using those character substitutions to find
what you're looking for in the Internet Archive well and I know this isn't
related to Internet Archive but it sounds like we should just go get this
cheat sheets for any database maybe newspapers calm or ancestries city
directories and use that cheat sheet as well what do you think yeah exactly it's
an invaluable tool print it off have it up above your workspace right next to
your all your other stuff and it'll be well worth using your printer for aren't
you glad that you're watching this video I love this perfect keep going
alright so another tip when it comes to the to the websites is always always
when you're on a website and you there's a risk with the internet that things are
not going to be permanent make sure you save it to your favorites because if you
forget the URL the WW that we type in at the beginning there's not a way for you
to use the wayback machine feature on the Internet Archive to find it it's
it's not a miracle-worker you can't just ask it to find that website that I saw
five years ago that I'm thinking of right now it can't do that but if you
know the URL if you saved it in your favorite in your browser you can go back
and find it through that archived internet that they have on there which
is fantastic so tell me more about this way back
because you just kind of alluded to it what is it what it what's the purpose of
it so the wayback machine on the Internet Archive is a feature where
they've been archiving parts of the internet since 1996 so if you think
about it that's 23 years ago right so almost a quarter of a century worth of
the Internet has been archived not every site gets archived but the big ones will
right so if there's important data information that you've had where you
get you'd log in and you try oh I'm going to go to that website and you get
the 404 error page not found instead of getting frustrated and checking your
computer out the window you copy and paste that URL you go over to the
Wayback Machine on the internet archive paste it in there and it will give you a
whole readout of when they archive that web page from 1996 to present perfect so
my mom had a pageant news service called turn for the judges and it began
actually about 1996 oh that's fabulous but I do
remember checking out I do remember checking out her website
and some of the pictures weren't there do you know why but that might be yeah
so sometimes when they archive the website they're not doing a screen shot
which is great because it still makes the page links interactive so you can go
from one page to another you can still click on the links they stay active but
because of that if that picture is no longer available that just comes up with
like a little square with the sad little piece of paper that's folded over and
one yeah that's what I'm finding yeah that's the further back you go the more
common that is but the further back you go those links are still active which is
fantastic okay great so not everybody is searching for pageantry obviously but
you could be looking for genealogy data and so this archives death bet people
posted long long ago I really like that that's a great tip do you have any more
tips oh yeah so if you have kids if you have grandkids one of the greatest video
games in the history of that and if you were born anytime between 1960 and now
you have played Oregon Trail they have I thought you're gonna say something else
on Atari like pong or Frogger or space invaders but okay keep going they have
those too but the Oregon Trail is fantastic because it it's it's the
cheese sauce on the broccoli of history right because kids like like broccoli
right they don't necessarily like history right I think they don't like
tide they're fed up but when we cover it in cheese sauce right it makes it much
easier for them to eat right it's that it's that so the Oregon Trail video game
is broccoli and cheese okay I like that or maybe broccoli and ranch dressing
very there you go okay and so it allows you to teach them the history especially
if he had families that were part of a pioneer movement that came across it's a
great way to for them to learn that history we played that with our kids
recently when they had a series of snow days and we were ready for them to die
of dysentery and and our kids did we let them make
mistakes we let them you know just explore that game and they learned so
much and my wife was able to share with them trail stories and stuff that they
from from our own ancestors that had done that that had walked across the
plains and it was a great experience for them so making family history enjoyable
for kids is incorporating some of the things in the past especially the 10x2
the history I really like that cuz we have a lot of good viewers you're like
what can I do with my kids get them involved and I had kids who absolutely
loved video games they ad nauseum oh my gosh think it away from the screen you
really like that so maybe I could do a little trade-off what a great tip
anything else um yeah so so yeah there's so much on the internet archive's this
is be the last one I promise and if you are maybe an older person and you
remember back in the days when TV didn't have pictures it was just called radio
they have a series of old radio programs like Gunsmoke and dragnet and what a
great way for you to share that with your with your grandkids do they have
war of the world I believe they do on LibriVox where you can listen to that
okay we're gonna have to check that out because isn't that the one where people
actually thought the world was thought the world was coming to an end yeah I
think my kids are totally laughs since they watched adventures and everything's
coming to end and they wouldn't really get it but it would be kind of fun with
it yeah oh yeah it would the kids would love it so often okay so Dan you are the
family history guy tell me and the viewers how they can connect with you
and what is the family history guy mean yeah so you can connect with me through
any social media platform on Twitter Facebook I've got a website that you can
go to and the family history guy is just that it's just every family has that guy
that's in the family history right or girl that's in the family history and
for my family I'm that guy and so I started posting stuff about my own
family and it's grown to posting things about other people's family and how you
can do research on your own so so what is a post that you would recommend
people reading like right now like your favorite post did you post it okay
my favorite one is about my oldest son he was in a middle school jazz band a
couple years ago and if you've never been to a middle school jazz concert
congratulations you've won the gift of life
if you've ever put a cat in a blender it sounds pretty pretty close well because
that's a lot of people kind of barely learning to play the instrument I played
the oboe and it sounds like a dying duck and so you've got a lot of dying duck
heard of dying ducks and and they're trying to play jazz and so we went and
and we patiently endured it but when we got to the car I talked to my son I said
oh did you know that your grandfather was a professional jazz drummer in the
1930s in the Detroit area he's like oh I didn't know that jazz must be in my DNA
right and after that he just wanted to listen to jazz music he just wanted to
be like his grandfather who he's named after and he just wanted that experience
because he hadn't connected those dots before and and that was and so I wrote a
blog post about it and it's a great way where we can whenever we can make a
connection like that with with with young people and family history that's
that's a win-win for everybody absolutely and I was thinking you're
going to tell us something about an ancestor but you started with the youth
and then tied it to the ancestor because there that we need to get them prepared
to take over the reins right exactly awesome well thank you so much Dan for
joining us on family history fanatics if you have any further questions about
Internet Archive put them in the comment section below and we'll make sure Dan
checks in from time to time to answer them and if you like the content we have
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