The Tree of Me

I was alerted a couple of months ago by Trevor McClaughlin from Macquarie University in Sydney and author of From Shamrock to Wattle about an book Murder Trials in Ireland 1836 - 1914 that had been published in 2009 by an Irish colleague, W.E. Vaughan. Trevor thought I would be very interested in the book as my ancestor James Agnew and his brother Henry had been convicted in Londonderry in July 1836 for having employed Patrick Toghill to take away the life of Henry McWilliam. I immediately ordered the fairly expensive book from The Book Depository and eagerly awaited its arrival. I have not been disappointed. Although I haven’t read all the book yet, it is littered with post it notes and markings throughout the book (I never used to write in books!). It has really helped me to gain a better image of Ireland at the time and how the legal system worked. Vaughan’s chapters include: an introduction discussing the scope of the study, apprehending a suspect, committal, indictment and arra...

This morning I have been downloading some digital books from the Reading Room at Ask about Ireland . I have decided to download them to my iPad. That decision was easy. It is so much easier to read these documents on a iPad than on my laptop. Now to my problem - do I view them in iBooks or iAnnotate PDF ? I've downloaded Fingal and its Churches (a scanned digital book) to both to see which is superior. iBooks At the bottom of the screen there are thumbnails of the pages to quickly move to a specific page. I can't highlight the text as I would like. iAnnotate PDF It is more difficult to move to a specific page. As the book is scanned, I can't highlight text as I could with a normal pdf file. I can however, still user the ruler tool and draw a box around selected text. If I email the summary, it only says I have a line drawing on a specific page, so this is of little use. If I make a note, and email the summary, the contents of the note are in the summary. This s...