The following announcement was written by GenealogyBank:

Headline: Over Four Million New Articles Available for Family History Research

The Mid-Continent Public Library's Genealogy and Local History Branch in Independence, Missouri is a world class genealogy center. It attracts genealogists from all over the country. However, the Genealogy and Local History Branch has outgrown the available room and a new $8 million building is now under construction. The new building is now scheduled to open in May, 2008. I wrote about this some time ago at http://blog.eogn.com/eastmans_online_genealogy/2006/09/new_8_million_g.h....

The following announcement was written by The Generations Network, parent company of MyFamily.com, Ancestry.com and several other web sites: BELLEVUE, Wash., Oct. 23 -- Myfamily.com, the leading social networking service for families, today announced a new release of myfamily.com 2.0 beta available at http://www.myfamily.com/. The new release lets families connect online to share news, recipes, family history, photos and video in a safe, private and media-rich environment.

I have written several times about Google Books and occasionally about Microsoft Books. Those two organizations are working with some major libraries to scan millions of older books. However, some libraries are no longer cooperating. They do not like the restrictions placed by those companies. Several libraries, including a large consortium in the Boston area, are instead signing on with the Open Content Alliance, a nonprofit effort aimed at making their materials broadly available.

This weekend I made a sad conclusion. As I get older, my vision gets worse. Squinting my eyes in front of a computer screen ten hours a day probably has not helped any. Growing up, my vision was always 20/20, but now I can barely read my email. Oh, and I've already moved my two monitors to the edge of the desk.