More family history links

I thought that I would add a new page to the ever-growing list of genealogical resource pages on the internet. This is not meant in any way to be a complete reference list, and is largely based on my own research over the years. Therefore it has a fairly defined geographical content. ie mostly the UK and predominantly Scotland.

I maintain a del.icio.us genealogy tag. If you want to check it out on a regular basis you can do so here.

United Kingdom

• FreeCEN - UK Census Online Project
  Check the Database coverage link at the bottom of the home page to see if what you are interested in has been transcribed and added.


• GENUKI
  This is an excellent source for beginner genealogists or those expanding their research into new geographical areas.
  
  
  
  • GENUKI Country and County codes
    This contains the three letter county and country codes that you often see used. e.g. SCT = Scotland
  
  
  
  

Scotland

• Scotland's People - the Official website for the GROS


• Scotland GenWeb

Moray

• Moray Local Heritage Service
  This is a wonderful site. Specifically you want to search the computerised index - LIBINDX. There is a link in the navigation bar and in the body of this page.

England

• North East Births, Marriages & Deaths
  This is a gateway to records for the North East of England. Some of the register offices involved have online searchable databases. If you have family in this part of England, this is a good jumping off point.
  
  
  
  • Newcastle City Council - Births & Marriages online
  
  
  • Tees Valley Indexes - The indexes of Middlesbrough, Hartlepool, Stockton-on-Tees and Redcar & Cleveland.
  
  
  
  

Wales

• Abersychan and Garndiffaith Local History Group
  For those looking for information on part of the area once known as Monmouth and also as Gwent.

Ireland

• Enniskillen & County Fermanagh guide
  A general interest website for this area, but it does include a family history message board.


• The Gravestone Photo Project - County Fermanagh
  Just as the title suggests - a searchable database of photographed headstones.


• Public Record Office of Northern Ireland

New Zealand

• The National Library of New Zealand
  There is a family history section here, but it can also be useful for the digital collection as background.
  
  
  
  • Papers Past collection
  
  
  
  

The Month of November in Books

This month was another slow reading time.  I managed four books all up.  Here they are:

Fiction:

The first two books are by the same author.  I spotted them in desperation one Friday night at the library.  The book I was looking for wasn't to be found, so I had to take what I could get.  I must confess that I only read the two because they were here, at home, and they weren't hurting my brain cells to read.  No other reason for hitting the second book at all.

Dead Sexy
This is the second book in the Garnet Lacey series by Tate Hallaway.
Chick-lit for Buffy fans, probably, would be my best description of these books.  It is a witches, vampires and zombie-fest.  For those who like their stories quirky, you may enjoy this.  The Amazon reviewers gave it an average of 4 stars.
Personally I think that is a little over-generous.  I would have hit a 2 or 3 star rating for this.  I can't put my finger on exactly what it was that grated, but something about the writing or storytelling just didn't hit the spot for me.



Romancing the Dead
As I said at the start, this book only got past the eyes because it was here and not a struggle to read.  Perhaps I was also hoping that the series and Garnet Lacey would grow on me.  But no.  She didn't.
If the concept of a Goth witch with a vampire boyfriend, ex-boyfriend and an internal nasty Goddess sound like you, then take a trip to the local library and check these out.  They won't strain the brain, and maybe Garnet will appeal to you more than she did to me.



Don't Hex with Texas
This is the last in the current series of Katie Chandler stories.  Her author, Shanna Swendson does have other plotlines for these characters, but like all things in real life her publisher needs the number of book sales to stack up before committing to another installment.  Such is the life of an author, I guess.

In this book Katie has returned home to her very, very un-magical hometown in Texas.  You get to know her family and find out that maybe the magic community in New York aren't the truly strange ones.  I have thoroughly enjoyed this series.  It's not rocket science, and each book is sometimes better, sometimes worse than the others.  If this is the end for the character, then it wasn't too badly done and leaves it to your imagination what becomes of her and her beau, Owen.

Non-Fiction:

Tax in New Zealand
Another useful book from Martin Hawes.  In this instance, all about taxation and what you should be looking out for.
If you're in business you will probably know most of this, but it never hurts to keep current. Accountants are great, but if you don't know the way things work, you could be missing out by not asking all the right questions.  I would suggest this if you are starting up a business, or feel a bit unsure about how things really work.

***

That's it for November.  It wasn't particularly spectacular, but hopefully December will produce a few more interesting books.  I'm halfway through The English Patient, so all going well¹ there will be at least one Booker prize winner amongst the reviews.

¹. This means my ability to concentrate, grit my teeth, and actually make it through an entire book that is more than a bit of candyfloss.

New look dashboard

I quite like it.

It will probably take me a while to get around to finding everything again, but the grey and blue look is my kind of colour scheme.  Probably a lot of "pink" and "neon" blog owners out there crying over their keyboards at the blandness though.

On other unresolved issues I'm still getting 'interesting' links in my "click" list, some of which are not particularly palatable.  Supposedly they are from my "related posts" section - which, as far as I know I turned off a week after they introduced it.  Still, if that's the only glitch I have to suffer here at WP.com, then all is right in the world.
If those of you who visit see the "Possibly Related Posts" addenda at the end of any of my posts, could you please drop me an email or leave a comment.  Personally I have never seen any, but that's what the WP support staff seem to think is generating my unsavoury outgoing links.  I'd like to know one way or another for myself if some folk are seeing things I'm not.  [That's not to say my loyal readers are too fond of the drink, now.]

Oh, and for those who are not WP.com bloggers (or about to self-host WP 2.7), then this post has probably been a bit puzzling.  Don't worry - it's not you, it's just me rambling on about the stuff behind the blog.   By way of making that up to you, I shall be posting my November books review shortly, so see you then.