Sunday, May 25, 2014

Exploring Heritage In the Multi-Digital World

May is Asian Heritage Month in Canada and also the United States since 1979. As part of the Asian diaspora, the month has been established in 2001 as an official celebration of the history of Asian Canadians and their contributions to Canada with organizations in almost every province.  In Vancouver, theVancouver Asian Heritage Month Society (VAHMS) celebrates with a month-long festival called explorASIAN.  This month, it offered a number of workshops on to help Asian Canadians discover their family heritage.



One of the projects I'm working on currently is the formation of a non-profit organization that can serve the needs of those who want to do Chinese family history research. The organization will cover every Chinese genealogical societies globally. Along with Global Research and Archival Management, Inc., this new organization, International Association of Chinese Genealogical Society (IAGS), strives to educate, and serve as a bridge to all Chinese genealogical societies registered globally with the support of the international volunteers specialized in Chinese genealogy research and education.

The accessibility of genealogical research has long been at the margins of those experts who have the time and the money to finance projects on family history.  But with digitization and digital information readily available online, the journey has been made easier.  But birth and death records; pre-modern village records; passenger registries; etc, are often available but waiting to be discovered.  There is a real disconnect for those who want to, but do not know how to get started.  The two videos above show how some of this work is beginning to be handled by community.  I hope to carry through some of this research, and share the the record of my journey with you.