|
Feb 02 2010 Newsletter
Arphax - Family Maps
 |
February
3, 2010 |
Home of the FAMILY MAPS & TEXAS LAND SURVEY MAPS series
CONTENTS
|
· Six
New Book Titles (and 40 others in December, in case you missed them)
· Statewide Atlases on CD
· Helping Others (and You!) Understand What We
Do
· Travel Schedule
|
Six
New Book Titles (and 40 others in December, in case you missed them)
Yesterday
evening, we added 6 new titles to our line-up for counties in Alabama,
Illinois, Ohio, Texas, and Wisconsin.
Check them out at www.arphax.com.
If you missed the last update we mailed out in late-December, you may
want to peruse the 40 titles we released at that time; for a limited time,
you can still do
that here.
Statewide
Atlases on CD
Modern state atlases are a must for trips back to ancestral homelands.
We have atlases for Kentucky, Georgia, Tennessee, Texas, and Illinois,
among others, crammed onto a rather unkempt shelf here at the office:
all giving testimony to their past service for on-the-ground research
efforts.
But how much more useful are statewide atlases from the past? What if
our questions about our ancestor's past involve where old schoolhouses
were located, or where farmhouses were in proximity to railroad tracks
that have long since vanished, or were near communities whose names have
changed or that have disappeared from modern maps? Or what if we just
want to know the nature of the county's roads and the like, at some point
in times past.
This is where historical atlases come into play. We mentioned in our last
Update that we now carry CD-ROM research tools from a few of our favorite
publishers.
One of those publishers, H-A-R of W. Lafayette, Indiana, has a number
of offerings that we think you ought to check out. These are CDs that
contain a historical atlas for an entire state.
Just seeing that a CD-ROM is available (of any kind) should not normally
set anyone's heart a-flutter, but here's at least one example of why,
perhaps it should. On a recent trip to Santa Fe, New Mexico, we stopped
by an antiquarian book store for a look-see, and lo and behold, an original
Nebraska State Atlas from 1885 was available for sale. This was an original
that we make available on CD for $69.95. That's not a cheap research tool,
we admit, but would you be surprised to learn that this bookseller was
asking $3500 for this original atlas? Very few CDs sell for less than
2% of what the book is going for, but that's the case in this instance.
These tools are scanned at a very high quality, have linkable tables of
contents, and were produced with the care you would expect from a working
archaeologist (which these CDs were).
Nine (9) Statewide atlases can be found on
this page which has links to Atlases for these states and for these
publication years:
Illinois (1876)
Indiana (1876)
Iowa (1875)
Kansas (1887)
Minnesota (1874)
Nebraska (1885)
Michigan (1873)
Ohio (1868)
Wisconsin (1878)
Some of these states' atlases are also available in multi-county regions
at a vastly reduced rate:
Illinois
Indiana
Iowa
Kansas
There are many other similar atlases available for counties in Kentucky,
Pennslvania, Virginia, and other states---you can find all these tools
and others here.
All of the Statewide atlases are produced as series of PDF files that
are readable with the free Adobe Acrobat reader.
Helping
Others (and You!) Understand What We Do
Each Family Maps book is simple to use, once you take a little time to
learn how it works. Researchers are usually surprised to learn that working
through one of these volumes involves moving from front to back through
the book, rather than seeking out a name in an index at the back. That
alone, will get you started in the right direction, but there is a little
more that we can share with you to insure your
Family Maps research
gets its best chance for success.
Though many ignore our advice and get along just fine, we feel like reading
the "How-to" chapter in each book will guarantee you the most effective
experience in the use of our books.
You may not realize it, but there's a copy of this chapter available on
our web-site. It's a little hidden, and that's why we are bringing it
to your attention now.
Do yourself a favor and navigate to this Samples page.
It is available from the Info
tab, available on most pages of the web-site.
What you find here are six (6) Adobe Acrobat PDF files you can download:
together, they give you sense of a complete book. A part of six different
books is available. The first download is a portion of our book for Sanpete
County, Utah. It includes the Table of Contents, Preface, and the "How-to
Use This Book" chapter. If you really want to understand what the "How-to"
is telling you, then download all six parts and follow along through the
"How-to" Chapter. When you are done, you will be an expert.
So, next time someone asks you why our books are such a big deal, send
them to the Info tab---then tell them to to go the Samples
link.
And for our Texas researchers, we plan on putting up a similar set of
downloads for the Texas series later. Stay tuned.
|
Travel Schedule
We are still
in the process of deciding where to travel in 2010. With several
new projects being mid-stream, plus the distinct possibility that
we may need to move our operation sometime this Spring (fingers
crossed we won't have to), we are holding off on over-committing
ourselves to travel in 2010.
We know we will be in Burbank, California for June 11-13 for the
41st Annual Southern California Genealogy Jamboree. Looks like
it will be another great conference. You can learn more at http://www.scgsgenealogy.com/2010jam-CallForPapers.htm
Though we've not formalized arrangements, we also plan on attending
the Federation of Genealogical Societies Annual Conference in
Knoxville, Tennessee from August 18-21. http://www.fgs.org/2010conference/index.php
We'll keep you posted as these and other plans are finalized.
We look forward to seeing you out on the research trail!
Thanks from the Arphax Team
www.arphax.com
info@arphax.com
1-800-681-5298
|
|
 |
Votes: 0
Voting..
|
|
|
|
|