Help Needed To Rescue UK’s Old Rainfall Records

Help Needed To Rescue UK’s Old Rainfall Records Are you sitting around the house, completely isolated from the outside world because of the CoronaVirus’ social isolation requirements? Are you bored? Would you like to help meteorologists, historians, and others with a crowdsourcing effort? There’s a great crowdsourcing project that needs your help. The UK has rainfall records dating back 200 years or so, but the vast majority of these are in handwritten form and can’t easily be used to analyze past periods of flooding and drought. The Rainfall Rescue Project is seeking volunteers to transfer all the data into online spreadsheets. You’re not required to rummage through old bound volumes; the Met Office has already scanned the necessary documents — all 65,000 sheets. You simply have to visit a website, read the scribbled rainfall amounts and enter the numbers into a series of boxes. “If you do just a couple of minutes every now and then — that’s great,” said Prof Ed Hawkins. “If you want to spend an hour doing 30 or 40 columns – then that’ll be amazing. But any amount of time, it will all add up and be a tremendous help.” If you want to take part, go to https://www.zooniverse.org/projects/edh/rainfall-rescue. from Eastmans Online Genealogy Newsletter  https://blog.eogn.com

Ancestry Library Edition available at home!

San Mateo County Libraries Website is at
https://smcl.org/resource/ancestry-library-edition-from-home-use/

Ancestry.com and ProQuest are providing public libraries with temporary remote access to Ancestry Library Edition through April 30, 2020. All you need to do is to click the link on our website and log in with your library card number and PIN.

Please note that Ancestry Library Edition has some differences from the consumer version of Ancestry. The family tree building tool, for example, is not available in Ancestry Library Edition nor are the DNA capabilities. For a full list of differences between the two products, visit this page from ProQuest.

When you get there, the trick is to click on Ancestry Library Edition (from home use)

Enter your card number and pin, and it should take you right there. Similar services are available from the Palo Alto Library System and other library websites.

Check your local library for further information.

Special thanks to Sara Hayden for following up on this with the librarian and getting an answer.  👍

Announcing The National Emergency Library

Logo Design Contributed by Yiying Lu

Announcing The National Emergency Library

During this unprecedented time in history, access to printed books is becoming difficult or impossible. COVID-19 is forcing students, educators, and everyday readers to rely on digital books more than ever before. That’s why the Internet Archive has temporarily suspended all waitlists, allowing you to immediately check out any of the 1.4 million books currently in our lending library. Until June 30th or the end of the US national emergency (whichever comes later), every borrowable book will be immediately accessible by anyone—creating, in effect, a National Emergency Library.

READ THE ANNOUNCEMENT

As of March 19th, almost a billion students around the world have been affected by school closures, obstructing their access to educational materials. Thousands of community and academic libraries have been forced to close their physical locations as well, further complicating the lives of readers. We hope that this new policy will provide everybody with the resources to keep reading—whether you need classic literature, science textbooks, genre fiction, or even just bedtime story material. We have also doubled the number of books you can check out at a time from 5 to 10, so borrow away!

START BROWSING

All these materials can also be found on Open Library—our online catalogue of published books. And not only can you find books in Open Library, but you can also curate and share reading lists, browse by genre to find new discoveries, and easily share what you're reading on social media. If we don't have the book in our collection, then the Sponsor A Book feature lets you decide what we digitize next!

VISIT THE LIBRARY

If you have questions about the new policy, you can browse our FAQ here. And if you want some tips and tricks for using our interface to read online, you can visit our help center!

GET HELP

Here at the Internet Archive, we believe that access to knowledge is a fundamental human right—and in a time of quarantines and school closures, providing that access is more important than ever. We hope that this change in our lending policy helps you find solutions during this period of uncertainty. Thanks for being one of our patrons. -The Internet Archive Team