Insights Into Our Future And Our Past

If you plan on visiting Temple Square this Christmas season, take a few minutes to warm up with a few holiday activities in the Family History Library! Children of every age are welcome to participate in scavenger hunts, listen to holiday madrigal concerts from children and teenagers across the state, or learn about Christmas traditions from around the world!

Learn holiday traditions from Tonga, Denmark, Germany, England, Mexico, Norway, Ireland, France, Sweden, and American Colonial and Pioneer times! (more…)

Feelings toward family can, and should be an amazing thing! Despite good intentions, however, we all know someone who has difficulty bonding with immediate family members. The reasons may vary from minor misunderstandings, or a feeling of being different, to circumstances beyond anyone’s immediate control. Despite these exceptions, everyone can benefit from feeling a closeness with family members, whether those family members are living, or deceased. (more…)

A new FamilyLink (WorldVitalRecords) website run by an historians incorporating suggestions from genealogists is currently in testing. The site has a map tie-in, which attempts to geocode events in history. Many historical events, famous people, and artifacts are already geocoded and on their test site. But they take it a step further. The default view also includes a timeline. Thus, you can focus your view of world history and the associated geocoded pins on the map to a particular time frame.

The timeline appears on a scale across the top of the map. You drag the desired time frame back through history or forward through time and the pins which appear on the map change to those appropriate to the selected part of the timeline. When you zoom in, the pins and the list to the right also adjust to cover only those events that took place in the time period selected and the part of the map currently viewable. Quite an accomplishment!

World History Ancestry Timeline

Even better, you can upload your GEDCOM and view your family birth and death events pinned (in the proper time frame, of course) along with famous people and events in history. You can upload sections of your family tree and then select which sections of your family tree to display on the map. Thus, you could upload separate GEDCOMs of your four grandparents’ ancestors and then view just one branch of the family at a time.

Their map legend gets cut off when you include ancestors, so let me just tell you what the various pins represent - gold pins - births, blue pins - deaths, orange people - famous people, red balloons - historical events. The site also allows you to add content (events, famous people, etc.), so it becomes a community product as well. I really like what they’ve done and hope it is successful.

It is currently in closed testing - you have to get an invite, and each tester is only allowed to invite ten others (mine are already gone, sorry). You can request an invite from their site at www.worldhistory.com.

In 2004, I started including blogs in my presentations about using technology in genealogy. In 2006, I thought blogs important enough to give a separate presentation at conferences which I titled The Bluster about Blogging. I’ve talked about several tools for reading and keeping up with blogs, including Google Reader, BlogLines, PageFlakes, and NetVibes. I finally settled on NetVibes as the one that suited me best.

I’ve always wanted to find a way to make it easier for blogging newbies to find blogs and get started in at least reading and tracking genealogy blogs. Last year, NetVibes released a new feature called NetVibes Universe which I hoped would allow me to do just that. I tried it without much success. Now, I have finally succeeding in setting up a familyhistory universe on NetVibes.

Family History Universe on NetVibes

The idea is that each blog or other source that you follow appears in a separate box on the screen. As shown in the image here, I’ve set it up to show six blogs, each in its own box and at the left a widget which displays the latest photo posted on Flickr which has the tag genealogy. What you can’t see in this miniature image is there are six tabs across the top to group the genealogy blogs which I follow into several general categories, namely–

1. General
2. Genealogy Companies
3. Genealogy 2
4. Genealogy 3
5. British Genealogy
6. Genealogy Technology

The Family History Universe can be shared and used by anyone. This gives them a chance to see what NetVibes is like as well as what blogs are like before having to try to personalize or set up their own. Anyone can view this Universe at www.netvibes.com/familyhistory. If you have suggestion of a blog you would like to add to this universe, please leave a comment.

Whether you have been searching for ancestors for one day or one decade, there is a place everyone should begin when learning about their families.

At age 18 I wanted to learn more about my ancestors. Someone told me I should ask my family members for help, and listen to their stories. I visited my great-uncle, and recorded our conversation on a tape recorder. He told me about the family car (an old Model-T), family vacations, and the death of his mother. I interviewed my grandmother using a device that recorded our telephone conversation. She told me about the food the family ate during the depression, and her early years as a nursing student when she mixed prescriptions by hand. I took a bold step and wrote a letter to a family member who had disowned my family. While the response was not especially friendly, she sent me an original obituary that did not exist anywhere else.

Obituary of Charles Jacobs

Searching for stories about ancestors doesn’t have to be difficult or confusing. It can begin in your own home! Family members you don’t even know may have photographs, stories, or other helpful information to get you started on your search to learn more about where you came from!

My name is Diane and I recently became the manager of a new team called FamilySearch Community Services. The major question I get asked by people is: “What is FamilySearch Community Services?” So, here goes….

FamilySearch Community Services was formed to develop communities who will help each other with questions about finding ancestors.

It is impossible for the 45+ research professionals at FamilySearch’s Family History Library to provide help for people all over the world who want to find their ancestors. They could never interact with enough people, produce enough information and training, or provide help in all the languages required to meet all the needs. Hiring enough people to handle this would cost way too much. Our attempt to solve this problem started us on the path many years ago to utilizing volunteers to assist people. This has been successful, but is still limited because of the numbers of volunteers required. However, taking this approach, led to our development of a wiki.

A wiki is a website where information can be contributed by anyone. Initially, we created a wiki to help our volunteers find the answers they needed to help people with their research questions. We started by placing all of the information found in our many research publications into the wiki and then our volunteers and employees began working to update it and make it better. Very quickly we discovered the power of a community, even a small community, in improving information and keeping it up-to-date. So, we took it one step further and opened the wiki to the public for a beta test as FamilySearch Wiki found at http://wiki.familysearch.org

The FamilySearch Wiki is the first tool that allows the community to share their collective knowledge of records and how to do research. It will become the best place to go for information related to finding ancestors. Another tool that is in a pre-beta form right now is Forums which can be accessed through the FamilySearch Wiki. Forums allow people to ask a specific question and many people in the community can provide an answer. These are the first of many tools that will be developed to provide places where the people can help each other with their research questions.

There is power in a community!!! You know something that can help someone else–come help us help each other!!

What is FamilySearch?

You may have heard about one or more of the FamilySearch products and services:

• FamilySearch Labs
• FamilySearch Record Search
• FamilySearch Indexing
• FamilySearch.org
• FamilySearch Forums
• FamilySearch Research Wiki
• FamilySearch Tree
• The Family History Library and Family History Centers

FamilySearch is a brand name for the products developed by the Family History Department of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints. Rather than thinking of all of these products and services as separate, we hope that when one thinks of the name FamilySearch, the whole family of products and services will be considered together, rather than separately and independently. Together, we are working to find solutions to make it easier for you to find your ancestors!

Question 7: Why have all the versions of bad data for my ancestor(s) been merged with my good information?

The short answer: All of the genealogical information given to the Church over the years has been included in the Family Tree to encourage collaboration, help reduce duplication of effort, and help those just starting see what information already exists.The long answer: In creating the Family Tree the Church took all of the genealogical information received from various sources over the years and included it in the family tree. Primary sources for this information are collections of patron-contributed trees like Ancestral File or Pedigree Resource File, Temple records, and Church membership records. Over 1 billion records of individuals were analyzed by computer systems and where it was extremely clear that the records were of the same person they were combined together. After this process of finding duplicates occurred there were about 500 million records which constitute the data set in the Family Tree. There are still many duplicate records in the system that seem obvious to the human eye but are beyond the sophistication of current computer technology. The desire in bringing this information together was to have one central place where everyone could see the same information about ancestors and work together to make the information accurate. Bringing the data together in this way is also a key strategy in helping to identify where duplication of effort is occurring. This duplication can either be duplication of temple ordinances, or duplication of genealogical research. Additionally, bringing the information together allows the first time user to sign-in to the system and already see as much information as the Church knows about their family. While these objectives are accomplished with this approach, we have learned some important things about the nature of the information and the challenges of interacting with this type of a Family Tree. While we knew that there was much duplication happening and that there was a lot of incorrect information circulating about families, putting it all together in this system allowed us to truly grasp the reality of the problems. This is good in that we have a completely different understanding of the task at hand than when we started. This is challenging in that the problems are worse than initially believed. Not only do we see this, but the users of the system see this.

What we are doing about it: We are actively prototyping features which will make it easy to correct information in the system. We are also working to adjust the way we represent the records in the system so there is a clear relationship between the primary types of information – genealogical conclusions (opinions about the name, life events, and relationships of ancestors) and evidence (the sources that support the conclusions).

Question 6: Source documentation is a key part of genealogical research. The pilot program seems very weak in this area. Can this aspect of the program be improved?

The short answer: We agree that this is a weakness of the system and yes, we can improve it.

The long answer: The handling of source documentation is an aspect of the system that, due to time and resource constraints, was not fully built out. It does allow for the basic citation of a source and the creation of notes. It also recognizes notes and source citations in data that is imported to the system. The current implementation of these features is lacking in richness and usability.

What we are doing about it: Improving the way in which sources are treated in the system has been the focus of ongoing prototyping. We have considered a broad range of capabilities, like the ability to include digital copies of historical records and automatically citing sources from well-known record sets. We expect to enhance the way sources are captured and shared in the system in the coming months.

Question 5: I see that all of the information I originally submitted to Ancestral File ten years ago is in the system. I have more data to add. Is there an easy way to update the Family Tree with the changes without duplicating my original submission?

The short answer: There is currently not an easy way to accomplish this.

The long answer: Currently there are two ways to add changes you have made into the Family Tree. Both are manual and time intensive. The first, and preferred, method is to manually compare the information in your files to the information in the Family Tree, and then modify the information in the Family Tree. The Family Tree attempts to associate you with your previous submission(s) to the Church and give you ownership of these records. It is not always able to do this. In these cases, you can submit a request to claim legacy contributions. Once the request has been processed, you will be able to modify information you may have submitted previously to Ancestral File, Pedigree Resource File, and other similar systems. Second, you can upload your family history file to the system in a GEDCOM format. This method is usually discouraged as this approach usually introduces duplicate records into the system which must then be combined together. Most users feel the first option is easier. Either option is a manual and time consuming process.

What we are doing about it: The FamilySearch system being built has been designed to interact with software from affiliate commercial software companies. Several affiliate companies are building tools which will analyze a family history file, compare it to the information on FamilySearch and allow you to choose which information you would like to update into the system. These tools should greatly simplify the task. Two companies are building an add-on product for PAF that will allow PAF users to accomplish the same tasks.