Last month I started my “Genealogy News” series, and people seemed to love it, so here’s the next one for you. These are, putting it simply, a collation of news from the bigger-name genealogy and history societies, archives and other related organisations from Australia and elsewhere.

So grab yourself a coffee, and find a comfy place to sit and click on through to find out the latest news in the genie world. Anyway, now on with the news …

23andMe
23andMe Adds More Detail for Customers with British and Irish Ancestry
23andMe’s New Hereditary Prostate Cancer (HOXB13-Related) Report

Ancestor Network
The Irish Ancestry of President Joe Biden

Ancestry
Ancestry Shares Corporate Responsibility Progress in Second Annual Impact Report
Kurrent & Fraktur: An Introduction to German Paleography
Finding Your Irish Potato Famine Ancestors
Ancestry Community Update – March 2023

Australian War Memorial
Anzac Day 2023 at the Australian War Memorial
Australian War Memorial marks Iraq Invasion 20 years on

DNA Painter
Shared cM histograms: did you know? #3
New gridlines and enhanced chromosome view in maps
Keeping track of genetic ancestors: did you know? #2
Changing segment layer order: did you know? #1

FamilySearch
RootsTech 2023 Unites Friends and Families Worldwide
How FamilySearch is using the future to discover the past with AI

FamilyTreeDNA
How Can Testing Your Siblings’ DNA Help Your Genealogy Research?
The New “Events” Mini Feature in Discover
Three Important Takeaways From RootsTech 2023
Group Project Administration Series: Shifting Your Mindset on Genealogy
Early Contributions to DNA Studies from Rosalind Franklin and Florence Bell
New DNA Analysis Uncovers Mysteries Around Beethoven’s Paternal Line
FamilyTreeDNA Works With Cambridge University Team To Uncover New Health and Genetic Information About Beethoven
Two Ways To Manage Test Results With FamilyTreeDNA

Find and Connect
Usability Testing is Open!
More Institutions Added

Findmypast
Discover monumental inscriptions for England and Wales
How to build your family tree with Findmypast
Explore the updated 1939 Register and more
Discover the stories of your military ancestors this week
Who’s who on King Charles III’s family tree?
Discover all things Irish history with this week’s record release
How to use the free Findmypast app for on-the-go family history
Discover the remarkably rich history behind Irish diaspora through the centuries

Legacy Family Tree Webinars
The 24-Hour Genealogy Webinar Marathon concludes – more than 55k registrants!

MyHeritage
Daniel’s Favorites: 7 Historical Record Collections on MyHeritage That You Should Bookmark
New Look for Category and Collection Pages for Historical Records
8 Things a Genealogist Should Carry at All Times
MyHeritage Adds 19 Million Records in February 2023
What’s New at MyHeritage: Our Founder and CEO Gilad Japhet Addresses RootsTech 2023

National Archives of Australia
National Archives welcomes funding announcement for cultural and historical institutions

National Library of Australia
Temporary change to collection access
Book launch – Bold Types: How Australia’s First Women Journalists Blazed a Trail
Sustainable funding for the National Library of Australia
National Library welcomes announcement of ongoing Trove funding
Rare dictionaries at the Library
First Women in federal parliament – Dame Enid Lyons and Dame Dorothy Tangney
Apply now for Community Heritage Grants
Fellowships 2024: see your research come together

National Library of Ireland
National Library of Ireland Launches New Website

National Library of Scotland
National Library to celebrate 100 years of broadcasting in Scotland

Public Record Office Victoria
Feedback for new RDA for Redress and Reparations Function
Celebrating 50 years
Ports, piers and paddles: A century of Port Melbourne in photos
What’s new in 2023: March

RootsIreland
New East Galway Records
New Issue of ‘Irish Genealogy Matters’ Newsletter Published
New Limerick Records Added

RootsWeb
Retiring and Migrating Portions of RootsWeb

The Genealogist
Find your Infamous Ancestors

The National Archives (UK)
Ancestry to digitise UK Second World War records
Ancestry wins contract to digitise Ministry of Defence records
Colonial correspondence: Tasmania settlers [this is not brand new news, but worth resharing in case you missed it]

Trove
SOS: Save our Stories Appeal: Help State Library Victoria digitise the 1922-1954 editions of The Sun News-Pictorial
Admirable women in Trove: Shared by the Trove Community – Stories of little-known women making big impacts
National Library welcomes announcement of ongoing Trove funding
New in April 2023 Fresh in Trove, ready to explore
New in March 2023: Fresh in Trove, ready to explore
Coming Soon to Trove: New collections and titles (April 2023)
Find her-story (part two): Feminism in Australia 1980s-today
Explore Tasmania: 159 years of Tasmanian history with Libraries Tasmania
Find her-story (part one): Feminism in Australia 1900-1970s
First Australian leaders: For our Elders

Happy reading 🙂

The 4th annual 24-Hour Genealogy Webinar Marathon is coming, and it’s on NEXT WEEK, for those in the northern hemisphere is on 13-14 April, for us down south, it’s on 14-15 April! Pop in for a session or two, or stick around for the full 24 hours – it’s completely up to you. And thanks to MyHeritage and Legacy Family Tree Webinars, the entire event is free.

It begins on Thursday, 13 April, at 5pm EST (US time), which translates to Friday, 14 April, 7am (Sydney time), and runs for 24 hours.

Over that period there are 25 presentations from so many well-known genie presenters, including some Aussies and New Zealanders, and the talks cover a wide range of topics.

To make life easy for you, I’ve put the whole schedule below, with both the US time, and the Australian (Sydney) time. But if you’re in a different timezone, use a timezone converter tool, such as Time and Date, or others similar.

Legacy Family Tree Webinars writes …

Just like every year, the entire event is completely free and open to all. You can attend just a few of the webinars that interest you most, or challenge yourself to attend all 25 lectures back to back! Live Q&As will take place during the lectures and there will be door prizes available as well.

Can’t make it in real time? No worries: all sessions will be recorded and made available for free during the week after the event. Beyond that, you can always find them and view them anytime when you purchase a membership to Legacy Family Tree Webinars.

Eastern Time (US)	Sydney Time (Aus)	Speaker	Title
Thu, 5.00pm	Fri, 7.00am	Michelle Leonard	Solving Unknown Parentage Mysteries with MyHeritage DNA
Thu, 6.00pm	Fri, 8.00am	Daniel Horowitz	Spanish & Latin American Records on MyHeritage
Thu, 7.00pm	Fri, 9.00am	Paul Milner	Liverpool: The Central Hub for Northern Europe’s 19th and 20th Century Emigration
Thu, 8.00pm	Fri, 10.00am	Janice Nickerson	The Secret to Finding Your Ancestors’ Stories
Thu, 9.00pm	Fri, 11.00am	Mevin J. Collier	The FAN Club Methodology, DNA, and Genealogy Lead Back to Lunatic’s Plantation
Thu, 10.00pm	Fri, 12.00pm	Thomas MacEntee	Genealogy A to Z: A Trivia Adventure
Thu, 11.00pm	Fri, 1.00pm	Gena Philibert-Ortega	Ancestral Ink: The Social History Behind a Tattoo
Fri, 12.00am	Fri, 2.00pm	Michelle Patient	We Remember: Researching, Remembering and Commemorating Those Who Served
Fri, 1.00am	Fri, 3.00pm	Fiona Brooker	Slow Down – Planning Your Research
Fri, 2.00am	Fri, 4.00pm	Kinga Urbanksa	Polish cemeteries online
Fri, 3.00am	Fri, 5.00pm	Fran Kitto	There is more at MyHeritage than family trees and photos
Fri, 4.00am	Fri, 6.00pm	Helen V. Smith	To Have but No Longer to Hold: Divorce in Australia
Fri, 5.00am	Fri, 7.00pm	Shauna Hicks	Australian indexes online for family history research you might not know
Fri, 6.00am	Fri, 8.00pm	Andrea Bentschneider	Different calendars in German genealogy
Fri, 7.00am	Fri, 9.00pm	Zbigniew Stettner	Using MyHeritage to research Polish family history and to find living relatives in Poland
Fri, 8.00am	Fri, 10.00pm	Natalie Bodle	Unearthing the Treasures in the Irish Registry of Deeds
Fri, 9.00am	Fri, 11.00pm	Judy G. Russell	When Enough is Enough
Fri, 10.00am	Sat, 12.00am	Nicka Smith	Giving Them Their Glory: First Kansas/US Colored Troops 79th Regiment
Fri, 11.00am	Sat, 1.00am	Lisa A. Alzo	Tell Better Family Stories with MyHeritage
Fri, 12.00pm	Sat, 2.00am	Jill Morelli	Scandinavian Moveable Feast Days Explained
Fri, 1.00pm	Sat, 3.00am	Ugo Perego	An Introduction to Investigative Genetic Genealogy
Fri, 2.00pm	Sat, 4.00am	Michael D. Lacopo	The “Forgotten” Immigrants: The Swiss to America
Fri, 3.00pm	Sat, 5.00am	J. Mark Lowe	Finding the Original Record When the Index is Unclear
Fri, 4.00pm	Sat, 6.00am	Cyndi Ingle	Off the Shelf: The Unexplored Potential for eBooks in Genealogy
Fri, 5.00pm	Sat, 7.00am	Elizabeth Shown Mills	Elusive Ancestors: Never Too Poor to Trace

—————–

So what are you waiting for? Head to the 24-Hour Genealogy Marathon page on Legacy Family Tree Webinars, and click on the talks you’re interested in and ‘register’. Remember it’s free, and if you don’t get a chance to watch them live, you still have 1 week afterwards to watch it free. Alternatively take out a Legacy Family Tree Webinars membership (it’s only US$49.95/year), and you’ll get to watch all of these whenever you choose, along with over 1900 others.

A new series that I’m starting here is the “Genealogy News” posts. Putting it simply, I’m collating the news from big-name genealogy societies, archives and other genie organisations from Australia and elsewhere, and have listed it here for you. As for how often I’ll do it, I’m thinking monthly at this stage, but it will depend on what news is available, so we’ll see.

As RootsTech (the world’s biggest genie conference) was held recently, there were a lots of posts from numours people relating to the event. For this list I’ve chosen to not include them. They’re still listed on their blogs, so you can check them out if you wish. Anyway, now on with the news …

23andMe
Raising Awareness of Rare Disease
New Algorithm Cleans Up 23andMe Family Tree

Ancestry
Ancestry Launches Storymaker Studio
Celebrating 40 Years of Family History Discoveries

Australian War Memorial
Meet the women in construction at the Australian War Memorial
Australia’s first Academy Award 80 years on
Untold stories of Australian sailors and airmen revealed
Australian War Memorial’s new galleries take flight

FamilySearch
New Free Historical Records on FamilySearch 6 February 2023
The Family History Library Is Now the FamilySearch Library
New Free Historical Records on FamilySearch 30 January 2023
Updated and Redesigned FamilySearch Help

FamilyTreeDNA
FamilyTreeDNA Has Added 5,000 Ancient Connections to Our Database
Big Y-700 DNA Testing Breaks Down Brick Walls in Family with African Ancestry
Introducing the New FTDNATiP™ Report for Y-STRs
The Group Time Tree: A New Big Y Tool for FamilyTreeDNA Group Projects

Findmypast
Honour your heritage with over 100,000 new records, including female shipbuilders and engineers
Delve into the dark legacy of British slavery and the daily life of Nottingham’s churches this week
Enrich your tree with over 200,000 new records, from Lincolnshire to West Yorkshire
Celebrate the civil service and more with nearly a million new records

GEDmatch
GEDmatch sold again
GEDmatch owners Verogen bought by QIAGEN for US $150 million

MyHeritage
5 Women Inventors Whose Innovations Changed the World
MyHeritage Announces Third Installment of DNA Quest Initiative
Introducing Color Coding for Family Trees
Introducing cM Explainer to Predict Relationships Between DNA Matches With Greater Accuracy
Daniel’s Favorites: 10 MyHeritage Features Our Genealogy Expert Can’t Live Without

National Archives of Australia
The Captain’s treasures: Flinders’ letters and books join archival collection
Discovering Anzacs website decommissioned, making way for innovative new digital experiences
Frozen memories, now digital: Antarctic photographic collections preserved for future generations

RootsMagic
It’s here! RootsMagic 9!

ScotlandsPeople
Scottish Handwriting 1500-1700: a self-help pack available to buy
Our Records: One-hour-old: the youngest person enumerated in the 1921 census

The Genealogist
New Release: 1871 UK Census households now plotted on Map Explorer
More than 355 Square Miles of additional Lloyd George Domesday records released on TheGenealogist’s Map Explorer
TheGenealogist adds more than 342,500 to their 1939 Register, opening previously closed records

Trove
Batter up, ladies: Australia’s first women’s cricket match played in front of spectators
New in March 2023
Major Digitisation of Defence Service Newspapers [this was news late 2022, but I’ve included it in case you missed it]