The Ancestry Insider

#NGS2013 – The Future of Family History—According to You!

2013-05-23T00:05:00.000-06:00

What fix or feature do you wish
Ancestry.com or FamilySearch
would provide?

At the 2013 annual conference of the National Genealogical Society, some guy did a luncheon presentation titled, “The Future of Family History—According to You!” As part of the presentation he asked audience members, “If you could see Ancestry.com or FamilySearch fix just one thing during the next year, what would it be?” Hopefully representatives of both organizations were present taking notes. But just in case, I offer these brief notes taken by a kind attendee.

Stability—keep the website the same; don’t keep changing it.
Return search results in the same century specified.
Bring back Old Search on the Ancestry.com Library Edition.
NEVER get rid of old search.
I’d like to be able to download search results.
Fix others’ bad trees.
Fix automatic-logout.
The ability to split a tree on Ancestry
Exact search: It would be nice if it was.
Put a big red X on bad trees
Computer won’t upload a tree until you’ve documented it.
On Ancestry.com it would be nice to be able to go back to where you were after you’ve followed a set of links.
For Old Search: visual indications that you’ve already looked at certain lists or parts of it
Ancestry—record only once
Shakey leaves: documentation problems, temporary tree
FamilySearch: get to the catalog with one-click

We also did more long-term wish list. Here are just a few of those:

Map pop-up with surrounding counties
Ancestry.com do a Family Tree—Wikipedia model
Tag cloud of FamilySearch Pod
Map s as existed at time of event
Citations written out the way they should be—in the various programs
Film numbers and lists of all family history centers and libraries where they are at

There was lots more. It was impossible to capture it all.

What about you? Do you have a fix you’d like to see in the next year or a feature you’d like to see in the next five? Leave a comment at http://AncestryInsider.blogspot.com.

#NGS2013 – TRON, Mr. Spock, and Willie Wonka

2013-05-22T00:05:00.000-06:00

I don’t seem to be able to take notes at conference luncheons. That was certainly the case at the luncheon presented by Ancestry.com’s Sabrina Petersen at the 2013 annual conference of the National Genealogical Society. She titled her presentation “TRON, Mr. Spock, and Willie Wonka: If They Can Digitize So Can You.” Petersen is director of global imaging for Ancestry.com. Unlike TRON, Mr. Spock, and Willie Wonka, we won’t be digitizing and transporting people anytime soon, but we can digitize photographs and documents.

Petersen presented some great suggestions, and in the absence of notes she was kind enough to send me some:

1. Think like an Archive.

Archives think about how to preserve records and photographs for their patrons and posterity within a budget. For the most important and their most used copies they make digital surrogates, and put the record in a secure location so that it doesn’t have to be handled all the time, and store it in a dark safe place. Digitization allows for multiple copies of the original that can be shared as well as stored.

2. Think about how you are going to find a particular picture/document in the future.

Putting metadata within the name of the image itself is the easiest way to find it in the future. You might put “Aunt Nancy Family Reunion 1982 picnic” as the name of the picture. Or “Death Certificate Benjamin Franklin Blansett 1912”. By making the name the basic information you can then easily search and find it again. Then you can further organize the files by putting them in folder by event, family surname or by type of record. All of these will help make the retrieval of this easier in the future.

3. Digitize your records.

This can be done by using a whole slew of different types of equipment, but probably the easiest is a digital camera for most documents, besides which cameras are easy to carry with you when you are visiting relatives, or maybe even at an archive. Make sure you capture the document or picture as straight as possible when you take the picture. While it might be easy to straighten a photo after you take it, it will produce some digital artifacts that are not yet visible. If you copy these files many times, depending on the format, these artifacts become more apparent to the naked eye. The easiest way to help avoid these is simply take a straight picture to begin with.

4. Which brings us to formats to save your images.

There are a lot of formats to choose from. JPEG and TIFF are the most common. Whichever you choose, make sure that you have the original copy someplace safe and then make a second copy which is the one you play with, send to others, or upload for safe keeping to your family tree on Ancestry. This second copy can be any file format you choose, including a PDF. This makes it easy to share, easy to send, and easy to upload.

5. Lastly remember that anything you do now is better than nothing.

Thanks, Sabrina. Now everyone. Get out there and get digitizing.

#NGS2013 - Ancestry.com’s Mobile App

2013-05-21T00:05:00.000-06:00

(C) 2013 by the National Genealogical Society, Inc.
Used by permission of the National Genealogical
Society and the photographer, Scott Stewart.
Scott inadvertently caught me listening to Aaron.
Can you tell which one is me?

Ancestry.com didn’t have any presenters do regular sessions at the 2013 annual conference of the National Genealogical Society, so I had a challenge writing about Ancestry.com. I would have attended their “Ancestry Day” sessions Saturday, but I was too wound up in my own presentations. As an alternative, I attended a couple of their in-booth presentations.

Aaron Orr is the product manager for Ancestry.com’s mobile product. It is available for both iOS and Android although the Android app lags the iOS version a little bit.

The Ancestry app is free and easy to use. Login using your Ancestry.com account. Or simply start entering your tree.

You can see all your trees on your device. Download a tree to your app and as long as you don’t log out, it will stay on the device. If you want to make changes, you must be connected. As you make changes either on the web or on the app, changes are reflected on the other.

You can choose either a pedigree view or a tree view.

Click on a person or swipe the right edge of the screen to view details about a person. Along the bottom you can select three tabs: info, family, and gallery.

On the Info tab you can see life events and add more. You can view hints. You can view the person’s relationship to yourself. You can add notes here. “Notes are super great while out in a library or archive,” said Orr.

On the Family tab you can see family members: parents, spouse, children, and siblings. You can add new ones.

On the Gallery tab you can see photos, attached Ancestry.com records, and sources. You can add more photos.

The top left corner of the screen has a list button that lists all the people in your tree. Or filter the list to just direct ancestors, end-of-line people, living relatives, people with hints, or people with recent hints. Or search by name.

The center button at the top lists your user trees. It shows which ones have been downloaded. You can change the tree settings from there.

While difficult to see, some person cards have a shadow. (All of the persons in the illustration above have one.) Click the person to reveal more of that person’s tree.

There are two types of hints: photos (iOS only) and records (shakey leaves). There was a way to share but I can’t remember how. You can share via Facebook, Twitter, or email. It sends a cool email that contains the image and context about the person. It looked pretty cool but I could not find how to do it. Why don’t iPad apps have help files? I tried to search help on Ancestry.com, but Advanced Search had never heard of the Ancestry app. Frustrating.

I only experienced one other hiccup while I prepared this article. One time I clicked the screen and it went all scrambled. After about 5 seconds I was suddenly back on the iOS desktop. I restarted the Ancestry app and found myself on some random person. Hopefully nothing was lost in the episode.

Because Family Tree Maker can synchronize with Ancestry.com public member trees, and because the Ancestry App can synchronize with Ancestry.com public member trees, it is possible to synchronize your tree across all your devices and environments.

Thanks, Aaron, for the demo.

#NGS2013 – Futures for FamilySearch Family Tree

2013-05-17T00:05:00.000-06:00

Whenever possible, I attend sessions presented by product managers so I can report on the future plans that they often reveal. (Too bad Ancestry.com product managers rarely present such sessions.) In this regard Ron Tanner’s presentation at the 2013 annual conference of the National Genealogical Society did not disappoint.

For the most part, he didn’t give too much guidance on when these features might be seen. “Sooner or later, or later than that,” he said.

Family Tree will soon have printable family group sheets and pedigree charts. When? The release is being held up by translation into 10 languages. Product managers are considering not waiting, releasing English sooner.

In a few weeks or so they’ll add the ability to take any photograph and make a source out of it.

Family Tree is currently in a transition phase with synchronization occurring between Family Tree and NFS. “Today, if a combine is not allowed in NFS, then we are not allowing a merge in Family Tree,” said Tanner. “Once we can separate the two, then you’ll be able to do the merge.”

Family Tree will soon support notes on ancestors and the notes over in NFS will be copied over. The notes will support up to 10,000 characters, allowing long proof statements.

FamilySearch is going to bring over all your sources from NFS. Tanner later said something I partially missed, so I’m not certain I understood it correctly. I thought he said FamilySearch is going to send a survey to those with sources in NFS asking if they want their sources migrated. If they so indicate, the sources will be placed in their source box.

Family Tree doesn’t support attaching sources or reasons to living persons. They are not yet full-fledged citizens of Family Tree, residing exclusively in NFS. Consequently, these new features of Family Tree will not be supported for living persons until they are fully implemented.

Tanner wants to add quality indicators to Family Tree. These would flag basic pedigree errors like

birth after death
death after burial
person died young and has spouse
birth before mother/father birth
birth before mother/father was 12
birth after mother died
death before marriage date
marriage date before person is 12

FamilySearch will match records in historical record collections to ancestors in the tree.

They are going to add a report abuse button that allows you to report someone who keeps reverting changes and won’t read notes and won’t discuss. “If they won’t cooperate we will delete their account.”

They are working on the watch notification timing. They may allow change notification to occur in as little as 5 minutes.

They are adding Helper capability to Family Tree. It allows someone to sign in as someone else—with their permission—without that other person disclosing their password.

He is thinking about implementing toggle war detection. If a value gets changed back and forth too many times the system would automatically lock it for some time, say two weeks. It would tell the combatants to let their emotions cool down and to enter into a discussion as to what is the right value.

He is thinking about implementing an “Is Accurate” designation that could be applied to an ancestor once he was largely complete and unanimously regarded as accurate. The designation would make it harder to change information about that ancestor.

FamilySearch is working on a way to help attach census records to an entire family and minimize the amount of work required.

They are also discussing what to do to support DNA results.

Not every Family Tree user has chosen to make their email address visible. Tanner would like an internal messaging system built so people can send messages to them and everyone else.

I look forward to seeing these features, no matter how many months or years it takes. Thanks, Ron.

#NGS2013 – FamilySearch Family Tree, An Item or Two

2013-05-16T00:05:00.000-06:00

A lot of expert, accredited, certified genealogists present at the annual conference of the National Genealogical Society. I learn a lot.

Not to be left out of the initialism crowd, Ron Tanner, product manager at FamilySearch, added some of his own. He is “Ron Tanner, POFT, OAG, F4:1.” He explained that these stand for Product Owner of Family Tree, Observer of All Genealogists, and Father of 4 with 1 grandchild.

In his session, “FamilySearch FamilyTree: Documenting the World’s Genealogy,” Tanner made a case for a unified, shared, world tree. Without one, there is a lot of duplication of research. It is difficult to continually compare your tree with all the other pedigrees out on several websites. “What will happen to your online tree when you are gone?” he asked. “Who will take over your work?” FamilySearch is expert in preservation. With Family Tree, your work is preserved in the vault.

I’ve already written about much of what Tanner presented. Here’s an item or two that may be new to you.

The history list keeps track of the last 50 people you have worked on. You can quickly jump to any one of them by selecting their name.

The pedigree is a little bit different because it shows couples together, This allows more people to be shown on the screen.

“Our goal is to make it easier to change data back, than what it takes to change it,” said Tanner. Family Tree allows undoing changes with the click of a button. This addresses the problem in New FamilySearch (NFS) where cleaning up problems took hours and reverting to the erroneous state took seconds.

An original design goal of Family Tree was that every change required an explanation. But some users wanted to edit the explanation associated with the previous change. “[We asked ourselves,] ‘Do we make people add a new reason or let them edit the last reason?’” said Tanner. “We decided to let you edit the last reason.” In my mind this essentially changes the objective from explaining the change to explaining the value. That’s OK, though.

Tomorrow I’ll talk about the future plans for Family Tree.

#NGS2013 – Stump the Genealogist

2013-05-15T00:05:00.000-06:00

Friday I attended a presentation in the Ancestry.com booth titled “Stump the Genealogist.” Crista Cowan fielded questions from the audience about their genealogy or about Ancestry.com. The following should not be taken as quotes. I’ve taken some liberties in rewording questions and answers.

Q. Blah, blah, … can’t determine when he might have died… blah, blah… appeared in this census and was gone the next.

A. Have you checked city directories to see when he stopped appearing? The census was taken every 10 years. City directories fill in the gap in between. When they disappear, that’s a clue that they died or moved out of the area. Sometimes the city directory will even give a death date, or list a wife as a widow.

We now have more than 1 billion records in the U.S. city directories database.

To find it, use the card catalog. Point to Search and click on Card Catalog. Filter by “Schools, Directories & Church Histories.” The U.S. City Directories database then appears at the top of the list of databases.

Q. Some directories are not complete. Are you planning on fixing them?

A. We digitized these from microfilm so all we have is what is on the microfilm.

Q. Are you going to get the 1890 census?

A. It was destroyed in a fire.

Q. I can not find my great grandfather. Blah, blah. In 1860 he was 9. Blah, blah.

A. Did he serve in the Civil War? That is where I would focus. Point at Search and click on Military. Down the right-hand column in the More Help section click on Civil War. This will search all our Civil War collections.

Q. I’m looking for the death record of my blah-blah. He blah, blah in New Jersey between 1905 and 1909. And blah blah.

A. Where have you looked for her death record? Here’s one of the things I want you to think about. Every time you do a global search, that’s great. But if I’m looking for something really specific I’ll look to see what records Ancestry.com has. Use the card catalog. Point at Search and click on Card Catalog.

For your blah-blah, you can click on the Birth, Marriage & Death filter to show just vital records. Then click on Death…. Filter by USA and then New Jersey. You could even filter down to the 1910s. You can see we have a database of New Jersey Deaths. I would search just that collection.

Think about what you’re looking for and then see if we have a database that might contain it.

Family Tree Magazine Honors the Ancestry Insider

2013-05-14T01:05:00.000-06:00

I am humbled to learn that Family Tree Magazine has honored the Ancestry Insider blog as a Family Tree Magazine 40 Best Genealogy Blogs in its May/June 2013 issue.

“Let’s tip our collective hats to those bloggers who stick with it and keep sharing their wit, wisdom and family history finds with us,” said contributing editor David A. Fryxell. “We love blogs packed with information, but we also adore those brimming with the blogger’s personality.”

The Ancestry Insider was honored in the “Tech Support” category. Of the Ancestry Insider, Fryxell said

That author remains anonymous, though the blog notes with tongue in cheek, “He has been an insider at both the two big genealogy organizations, FamilySearch and Ancestry.com. He was Time magazine Man of the Year in both 1966 and 2006. And he really is descended from an Indian princess.”

David, David, David. I really am Time magazine Man (Person) of the Year in both 1966 and 2006. And I really am descended from an Indian princess. <sly-smile>

For the complete list, see “Top 40 Genealogy Blogs in 2013.”

#NGS2013 – Cutting Through the Confusion: Research in Upstate New York

2013-05-13T01:05:00.000-06:00

At the 2013 annual conference of the National Genealogical Society, Karen Mauer Green presented a session titled “Cutting Through the Confusion: Research in Upstate New York.” Green is an editor, author, lecturer, and professional genealogist. She co-edits the NYGB Record. She has served on the boards of APG and FGS.

“This is a huge subject, upstate new york,” she said. “We can’t cover it all in one hour.”

“I want to give you some guidelines and tips and also warn you about some pitfalls,” she said.

The definition of “upstate” differs by person and situation. For purpose of the lecture, Green defined upstate New York as everything but the five boroughs of New York City. She focused on the time span 1780-1850.

One confusion experienced by researchers in New York state is town versus township. In New York, the concepts are equivalent. In my recent research, I found records giving the living place of an individual alternately as Dugway and Albion. Both are true because Dugway is a place (hamlet?) within the Town of Albion in Oswego County.

“You’re used to having records in certain places and that is not always the case. It leads to blinders.” There is no real consistency among counties. Counties differ in “what information is recorded, what the record is called, how and where the record is preserved, and how the record is accessed.”

“This has all been very negative, but I have more bad news,” Green said. In the focus time period there are no New England style town vital records, A state law to keep them was passed in 1881, but consistent records were not kept until 1908. Further, there were no county marriage records.

Substitutes for vital records are worth looking for. Some are newspapers, justice of the peace records, minister’s records, and church records.

Green discussed other records useful for doing research in the time period, which I won’t mention.

“I know I have been discouraging to you, but the good news is that people do break through [brick walls],” she said. Back up. Start over. Apply cluster methodology (Elizabeth Shown Mills’s FAN club—Friends, Associates, and Neighbors).

“You will almost always find a gate,” she said

#NGS2013 - Online Tools for Genealogists

2013-05-09T16:36:00.001-06:00

Barbara Ann Renick presented “Online Tools for Genealogists” at the 2013 annual conference of the National Genealogical Society (NGS).

Renick is secretary for the NGS board of directors and authored Genealogy 101: How to Trace Your Family’s History and Heritage.

In her session titled “Online Tools for Genealogists” she spoke on “seven types of online tools genealogists find helpful: language and handwriting, time and calendar, geographic and map, history and background information, help and educational, utilities, and locator tools.”

One of the tools she mentioned was the Geographic Names Information System (GNIS), a national gazetteer.

“All of you pay your taxes and you deserve to get something back,” she said. GNIS is produced by the United States Geological Survey (USGS)

GNIS includes not just current place names but historic names as well. I used this capability recently. I wanted to visit the Happy Valley Cemetery in Oswego County, New York. I couldn’t find it on any map (and I didn’t think to use Find-A-Grave.) I searched on GNIS and found it easily. With an additional click I had it plotted on a map.

Renick has published links to the online tools on her Z Links page, www.zroots.com/links.htm.

#NGS2013 - Using FamilySearch.org to Unearth Your Family Roots

2013-05-09T15:27:00.001-06:00

At the 2013 annual conference of the National Genealogical Society, Beth Taylor of FamilySearch presented “Using FamilySearch.org to Unearth Your Family Roots.” She is a research consultant for the United States and Canada at the FamilySearch Family History Library in Salt Lake City.

She presented use of the FamilySearch.org website from the researcher’s point of view.

“I’m a user, just like you.”

She spoke about the FamilySearch Family Tree, which she calls “the new, new FamilySearch.”

“What if we had our tree?” she asked.

Taylor said you can discover what research has already been done. You can collaborate with others to reach conclusions. You can explain your conclusions and attach sources. And you can share photos and stories.

Most of what Taylor presented I have written about before, so let me hit some highlights.

Family Tree still supports the bow-tie view pedigree chart, starting with you in the middle. You can hover and click to see multiple wives and hover and click to see the children. Click on a person to see a summary card. Additionally, Family Tree sports a fan chart as an alternative to the bow-tie view.

On a person page the subject individual is listed more than once under Family Members. That is not to say there are others with his name. Rather, he is listed once for each spouse and once as a child for each set of parents. He’s listed in bold to indicate that he is the subject of the page.

In historical record collections, FamilySearch has

3.5 billion searchable names with
1 billion images indexed.
There are about 200 million indexed names published each year.
There are about 35+ million new images added each month.

Use filters to decrease the number of results from a search. By way of illustration, a search for Mordecai Cleaver (b. 1832, Ohio) in the 1870 census can be accomplished entirely with filters:

A search for family name Cleaver gives 334,000+ results.
Filtering Birth Year to the 1800s drops the number to 126,661.
Further filtering birth year to the 1830s drops the results to 9,769.
Filtering the birthplace to the United States and then to Ohio filters down to 404.
Filtering for the 1870 census drops the results to 64.

That’s a small enough set that someone can easily review it.

Filtering is also available for the list of all record collections. One of Taylor’s favorites is filtering by name.

As indexing projects progress, results are published incrementally. The number of records shown in the list will go up as FamilySearch finishes more of the collection. For a state collection, they might publish by county. The little description at the top of the record collection page is important because it often tells what jurisdictions are done.

When looking at a record in a collection without images, pay attention to whether the record shows a film number. The film can be ordered for viewing in your local family history center.

Instead of having all the fields automatically showing in a search form, FamilySearch requires you to click to open up the search fields.

If you’re not paying attention to the browse-only collections, you’re missing half of what FamilySearch has to offer.

#NGS2013 - Documenting the Lives of Mormon Women

2013-05-09T11:54:00.001-06:00

“Why is it it is so hard to find information about our women ancestors?” asked Gena Philibert-Ortega in her session at the 2013 annual conference of the National Genealogical Society. We need to use the kind of sources that document women’s lives, she said. These are sources like newspapers, membership lists, signature quilts, scrapbooks, diaries, history resources, and so forth.

“One of your first stops should be the FamilySearch Research Wiki,” she said. One article is “Tracing LDS Ancestors.” It is a good place to start learning about LDS genealogy in general.

To find women we need to research more than the woman herself. We have to research the family, the neighbors, the community, and organizations. For example, even though your grandmother may not have kept a diary, someone who did may have written about her.

“You’ll also want to research the history of the time,” she said.

When using a library or archive card catalog or online resource, don’t search for your ancestor’s name. Instead use keywords such as “Mormon Women” or “Washington County.”

Philibert-Ortega pointed out many excellent websites. All the links will be posted on her blog, Gena’s Genealogy.

No Time is Ever Wasted Doing Research

2013-05-08T14:48:00.000-06:00

“No time is ever wasted doing research, if we learn,” said Marian Smith at the opening session Wednesday morning of the 2013 annual conference of the National Genealogical Society. “Some questions take years of work to answer,” she said. But along the way we learn about persons, places, events, economies, and societies. This information helps explain some of our ancestors’ decisions. “You can never learn too much about the historical background,” she said.

Smith’s address was titled “People, Policy and Records: The Importance of Historical Background.” She is the chief of the Historical Research Branch of the US Citizenship and Immigration Services, formerly the Immigration and Naturalization Service, since 1988.

Smith presented the story of her research project to uncover the author and origins of the Morton Allan’s 1931 book Morton Allan Directory (or “MAD” as she sometimes wanted to call it.) Genealogists have used it for generations to identify ships, ports, and travel dates to facilitate passenger list research. (It can be searched on Stephen Morse’s One Step search website.)

Four points sum the major lessons learned by her experience:

Some questions take years of work to answer.
No time is ever wasted doing research if we learn more.
Be prepared to be surprised.
Question your sources.

The session was sponsored by Archives.com whose representative, Amy Johnson Crow, shared a bit or two of information. People had a lot of questions when Ancestry.com bought Archives. As they said they would, Ancestry has kept the Archives name, kept Archives separate, and improved the offerings. They’ve added new content, including the UK Census, Griffith’s Valuation and records of the Evangelical Lutheran Church in America (ELCA). They’ve upgraded their image viewer. They have a new weekly series of live stream videos. Look for improvements in search and browse later this year.

Debunking Misleading Records by Thomas W. Jones

2013-05-08T10:00:00.000-06:00

We have to make an act of faith and trust that a record is wrong, said Thomas W. Jones. That is, we need to mistrust that a record is correct. In Jones’s session, “Debunking Misleading Records,” he said it was uncharacteristic of him to ask such a thing, but in this case it is warranted.

“You have to mistrust it in order to be able to validate it,” said Jones.

Trust of incorrect records is rampant, he said. We want to believe that the information is correct.

We need to mistrust records so that we can detect errors. We detect errors by analysis and comparison. We then discard incorrect information. Finally, we prove correct answers by explaining and documenting our conclusion, including the resolution of conflicting evidence.

He suggested discarding incorrect information when it is:

“Information that you cannot corroborate,
Secondary or indeterminable Information from a derivative source,
Information you can document or convincingly explain as incorrect, or
Some combination of these.”

Use maps, tables, and prose to detect errors. “Write it out and you will find the brick wall doesn’t exist,” he said. At the very least you’ll understand better what you need to do next.

Thomas W. Jones, PhD, CG, CGL, FASG, FNGS, FUGA, has been a researcher since 1963. He is an educator in the Boston University Genealogical Research Certificate Program, as well as various institutes, conferences, and state seminars. He is a trustee of the Board for the Certification of Genealogists, and since 2002 has co-edited the National Genealogical Society Quarterly. Jones made the remarks in a session of the 2013 annual conference of the National Genealogical Society.

#NGS2013 Insider Room Map

2013-05-08T08:00:00.000-06:00

I’m finding the room map of the conference provided by NGS to be confusing. So I’ve created my own. This won’t be useful to most of you, but for those of you at the conference, perhaps this will help.

#NGS2013 Conference App for Laptop

2013-05-07T00:05:00.000-06:00

Did you know that the NGS 2013 Conference App is available for use on your laptop computer? As long as you have an Internet connection, you can use the app on any computer with a browser. Check it out at http://m.core-apps.com/ngs2013.

Your printed conference schedule contains black and white maps. I think the color maps in the conference app on a laptop are far more legible.

For native smart phone apps, check out http://www.ngsgenealogy.org/cs/maximize_your_experience.

#NGS2013 – Attendee Final Preparations

2013-05-06T00:05:00.000-06:00

With the 2013 annual conference of the National Genealogical Society quick on the scene, here’s some information conference attendees will want to know. (I’m taken most of these from “Tips for First Time Conference Attendees,” although they are applicable to all.)

Check out the program beforehand and plan what sessions you might want to attend. I like to print out the schedule and highlight sessions of interest. A list of sessions is on the NGS website. Alternatively, you can download the entire conference program booklet and print just the daily schedules. It is moderately big at 10 MB. The schedules are pages 22-29.
Bring some pre-printed address labels to use in the exhibit hall. If you want a vendor to send you additional information, stick an address label on the form so you don’t have to write out your address. I prefer getting brochures in the mail over carrying them in my bag and my luggage.
If you bring a laptop to the conference, you can access the syllabus off a flash drive provided by the conference. If not, and if you want printed copies of session handouts, you can download the entire syllabus as a PDF file before coming to the conference. It’s big (70 MB), so it will take a while to download. In a pinch you can print in the hotel business center, but that could be expensive.
If you pre-registered, you can avoid the crowd Wednesday morning by checking-in Tuesday night up to 7:00pm.
Don’t ask me why this country keeps its indoor spaces icy cold, even during winter time. You may well need a sweater or jacket inside the convention center.
The letter at the beginning of a session number indicates the day of the week, W, T, F, and S. Knowing this can help when leafing through the conference program or syllabus.

Stay tuned for conference coverage this week…

#NGS2013 - The Ancestry Insider’s NGS Daily

2013-05-03T00:05:00.000-06:00

I’m getting pretty excited about the NGS 2013 conference next week.

For the conference I’m experimenting with an online daily magazine. The magazine attempts to amalgamate the stories by all the bloggers and twitters about NGS or the conference. You’re welcome to try it out and follow along the comings and goings during the conference. It has kinks, to be sure. It is probably leaving some bloggers out. And it is picking up some random stories not about NGS. (Another organization is using the #NGS2013 hash tag.) But I hope you find it useful.

You can read it at http://paper.li/f-1362761994. You can read it there and you can sign up for a daily e-mail to notify you as each day’s edition is published.

Either Really, Really Good or Really, Really Bad

2013-04-23T00:05:00.000-06:00

Leave it to FamilySearch to release a controversial new website design while I’m not available to write about it. I’ve got a couple of minutes, let’s cut to the chase, the new website is either really, really good or really, really bad and we won’t know for months which it is.

Think back to yesterday’s article, “The Chasm.” An organization's failure to recognize the chasm results in a one-size-fits-all approach that simultaneously overly simplifies post-chasm genealogy and overly complicates pre-chasm genealogy. As deficiencies are noticed for genealogists on one side of the chasm, the pendulum swings in their favor at the expense of the other.

One of two things just happened at the FamilySearch.org website. Either,

1) FamilySearch realizes the chasm exists and we’re seeing the first move in constructing separate experiences for pre- and post-chasm genealogists,

2) FamilySearch doesn’t realize the chasm exists and just swung the pendulum back towards pre-chasm genealogists.

The former would be really, really good if it is followed up with additional moves to create a post-chasm experience, and to make both experiences genealogically sound.

The latter would be really, really bad and serves neither genealogist particularly well.

Only time will tell.

P.S. Congratulations to FamilySearch indexers for hitting one billion records indexed (also while I’m out of town).

The Chasm

2013-04-22T00:05:00.000-06:00

In genealogy there is a chasm. On one side of the chasm, genealogy is easy. On the other side, genealogy is hard.

On one side of the chasm are the ancestors and relatives we know personally. We know them as people. We grew up with them or with our parents talking about them. On the other side are ancestors and relatives that we know only through records.

On one side of the chasm we utilized living memory—our own and our loved ones.’ On the other side we utilized records.

On one side of the chasm are the modern census and vital records that uniquely identify individuals and relationships. On the other side records are incomplete, spotty, illegible, unindexed, hard-to-locate, or offline. Records are indispensably helpful, though seldomly so.

On one side of the chasm we blithely used direct evidence. On the other side, we painstakingly categorize, compare, contrast, correlate, and cite direct, indirect, contradictory, and negative evidence.

In genealogy there is a chasm. Before the chasm we thought genealogy was easy. After the chasm, do we forget it once was so?

Annual Fine Print

2013-04-19T00:05:00.000-06:00

Before I get to the legal stuff, I wanted to proffer an explanation. I haven’t been writing much lately. That’s because I am dedicating large amounts of personal time to upgrading my genealogy skills.

This effort will probably consume a year of my time, so I ask your patience. I’ll still try to get in a couple of articles a week. That brings me to the next couple of weeks.

Don’t expect any articles.

I’m going to a conference! Then I’m going on a research trip!

I’m looking forward to town clerks and local historians and graveyards and librarians and vertical files and obituary collections and probate court clerks and court houses. And nice people… nearly all of them alive.

And now some stuff I like to remind you of every year, my annual “fine print.” You are welcome to skip the remainder of this article.

The Ancestry Insider blog is the unofficial, unauthorized view of Ancestry.com and FamilySearch.org. The Ancestry Insider reports on, defends, and constructively criticizes these two websites and associated topics. The author attempts to fairly and evenly support both.

"Ancestry Insider" does not refer to Ancestry.com, but to the community in general. I don’t believe Ancestry.com owns or should own the word “ancestry” and I don’t believe anyone should use it synonymously with Ancestry.com.

I want you to know that my reporting is not completely unbiased. The Ancestry Insider may be biased by at least the following factors:

The Ancestry Insider accepts products and services free of charge for review purposes, including an Ancestry.com subscription. And free access to FamilySearch.org. Oh wait, everyone gets that.
The author of the Ancestry Insider is employed by FamilySearch owner and sponsor, the Corporation of the President of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints. All things considered, I would rather not lose my job. And I try to maintain good working relationships with those whose work I am critiquing.
The author is a believing, practicing member of the same Church. Through and through.
The author is a former employee of Ancestry.com. I loved it there and would work there again (although they probably wouldn’t have me). I maintain friendships established while employed there.
It is the editorial policy of this column to be generally supportive of Ancestry.com and FamilySearch.
The author is an active volunteer for the National Genealogical Society. May I say again that you ought to strongly consider attending their conference next month in Las Vegas. ;-)

The Ancestry Insider is written independently of Ancestry.com and FamilySearch. The opinions expressed herein are my own, and do not necessarily reflect those of Ancestry.com or FamilySearch. I write on my own time with rare exceptions. One exception is national genealogy conferences. FamilySearch has asked that I attend and write about these conferences. It does not prescribe what or who I write about, so I write about both Ancestry.com and FamilySearch.

I reserve the right to republish email and comments posted on my blog. These may be edited for content, length, and editorial style.

All content is copyrighted by the Ancestry Insider unless designated otherwise.

For content copyrighted by the Ancestry Insider, permission is granted for non-commercial republication as long as you give credit and you link back to the original. You may copy articles in your newsletter if you are a non-profit genealogy society. Underneath the title, put “by the Ancestry Insider.” After the article put the address of the website (http://ancestryinsider.blogspot.com). Hot link the address so that clicking it takes the user to my website.

OK. I think that about covers it. Wish me luck. Don’t forget to register for the NGS conference Monday. Stay tuned…

#NGS2013 - Now Would Be a Good Time to Decide

2013-04-16T00:05:00.000-06:00

The pre-registration deadline is fast approaching for the 2013 annual conference of the National Genealogical Society. You should go sign up right now while you’re thinking about it. The deadline is this very Monday, 22 April 2013. The conference will be held 8–11 May 2013 at the LVH-Las Vegas Hotel and Casino. That’s three short weeks away.

Sure, you can always register at the door. Onsite registration opens Tuesday, 7 May 2013, noon through 7:00pm. Or show up any morning of the conference and purchase a full ($230 with member discount) or single-day registration ($115).

So why pre-register? Pre-registration is required if:

you wish to purchase a ticket to one of the Thursday breakfasts, 9 May 2013, 7:00 a.m.
you wish to purchase a ticket to any of the many luncheons held daily. Yours truly will speak—sans mask—at one of them.
you wish to purchase a ticket to the NGS Banquet, Friday, 10 May 2013, 6:00 p.m.
you wish to purchase one of the pre-conference Vegas area tours sponsored by the conference.

For more information about these events, consult the Conference Brochure.

So don’t just sit there. Register now at http://www.ngsgenealogy.org/cs/conference_info .

New FamilySearch Website to Debut

2013-04-15T12:05:00.000-06:00

As I wrote this article over the weekend, it appeared FamilySearch still plans to debut its new website today, 15 April 2013.

The AncestryInsider@gmail.com received an invitation to view a beta version of the website. The invitation was directed to members of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints, so it will be interesting to see if the new design is available to the general public. Give it a try (www.familysearch.org) and leave a comment letting everyone know what you find.

The new website highlights photo and story sharing, Family Tree, a new fan chart, and temple opportunities for Church members. According to the email, members of the Church will find their family history experience can start with the Church’s website, www.lds.org.

Click images to enlarge

When a new user registers and views their fan chart, they are prompted to enter basic information about their parents and grandparents. (See images, above.)

When I attempted to upload photos for the first time on the beta website I was given this message:

We're excited to have you join FamilySearch Photos and Stories! Due to the overwhelming response, all of today's invites have been spoken for. Never fear—more will be available tomorrow at 9 a.m. MST. Please check back and we will get you started preserving and sharing your family photos with this exciting new tool. In the meantime, you can view photos that have already been published.

When I viewed the indexing page, I found the page shared progress reports not readily available elsewhere:

That is not entirely true. I just found a special page (https://familysearch.org/billionrecords) showing the number of records that have been indexed. The page shows the count “down” (so to speak) to a billion records. Give the page a few moments and it will start showing the count incrementing. It’s pretty cool, although I think the counting is just for show. Hit F5 to refresh your screen and maybe you get a truer value.

But I digress…

When I clicked the Volunteer link, I saw some interesting information about donating to FamilySearch:

I haven’t seen FamilySearch soliciting donations before. Interesting.

There’s probably lots more interesting things to discover. Check out www.familysearch.org today to see if the new website is public.

RootsTech Ketchup

2013-04-09T00:05:00.000-06:00

RootsTech was three weeks ago and I’ve not finished all the stories I wanted to write. My memory’s mush, however. It’s time to ketchup…

Dirk Weissleder

In the media center at RootsTech I got to meet Dirk Weissleder, National Chairman of the German Federation of Genealogical Societies. Dirk has over thirty years in genealogy and he opened the 64^th Deutscher Genealogentag (German Genealogical Convention) on 31 August 2012.

DearMYRTLE had an opportunity to interview him.

Dirk Weissleder interviewed by DearMYRTLE

If you can’t see the video above, see it at www.youtube.com/watch?v=1BuJYiEAVLI.

Other RootsTechs

Read about the Houston RootsTech event in an article in the Cypress Creek Mirror. Interestingly, one of the local classes there was one about Google searches that was taught by a Google employee. I can see how these satellite events can tap into local talent and highlight local records and search strategies.

While I’ve never heard anything else from the other locations affiliated with RootsTech, I did come across a couple of pictures:

Houston: http://web.stagram.com/p/418852775163338210_290284870

Kansas City: http://web.stagram.com/p/417368225200771007_144712082

One Billion Records Indexed?

In the days leading up to RootsTech FamilySearch announced that indexers had indexed 984 million records since indexing began in September of 2006. They hoped that the billionth record would be indexed at RootsTech. There would be unspecified prizes for the indexers and the arbitrator of that billionth record.

I never heard another word.

I’ve gone looking and found a graphic posted on the FamilySearch Indexing Facebook page on 29 March 2013 that gives the number of records indexed as 989,999,999.

RootsTech Developer Challenge

Part of the original vision of RootsTech was to bring together technology developers with technology users. With this year’s RootsTech, that goal seems to have slipped from the objectives. However, there was still a developer’s day with special classes for developers.

And once again there was a developers challenge. Nearly 20 developers participated in the 2013 developer challenge by submitting projects that demonstrated technical innovations for family history. From these, a panel of judges selected six finalists.

Designation	Project Name	Submitted By
Finalist	BrowseHero	Tom Auga & Chris Giesey
Finalist	Completely Relative (MS Windows App Store)	Benjamin Godard
Finalist	Hope Chest	Eric Vance
Finalist	OurFamilyHealth	Jaehoon Lee
Finalist	ResearchTies	Jill N. Crandell
Finalist	Treelines.com	Tammy Hepps

When winners were announced on Friday we were told to visit http://rootstech.org/challenges/overview for full details. Unfortunately, that page hasn’t been updated to show the winners. (Yes, it’s true—the RootsTech website this year was never kept up to date.) According to my cryptic notes, BrowseHero and OurFamilyHealth were category winners and Treelines.com was the overall winner.

Congratulations to the developers of these new, innovative products.

That’s a wrap. See you at NGS…

Ancestry Insider Spotted at RootsTech

2013-04-05T00:05:00.000-06:00

Someone spotted me in the media center:

And in the Find My Past booth:

There are also a couple more, less obvious.

Veronica Johnson of Savvy Office Solutions posted a photograph of the new FamilySearch logo and unwittingly caught me (well, part of me):

Photo credit: Veronica Johnson (Linkedin, Twitter, via.me)

Now that you know where to look, check out this photograph taken at the same time by bloggers Sistas in Zion:

Photo Credit: Sistas in Zion (Twitter, Blog, Facebook, Pinterest)

If you missed me at RootsTech, come see me at the annual conference of the National Genealogical Society this May 8th through 11th in Las Vegas, Nevada.

Land That I Love: RootsTech Tabernacle Choir Mini-Concert

2013-04-04T00:05:00.000-06:00

One of several events Thursday night of RootsTech was the Mormon Tabernacle Choir min-concert, “Land That I Love.” The theme was immigration, to spotlight the need for indexers to help with the FamilySearch U.S. Immigration and Naturalization Community Project. My memory is getting pretty foggy, so I hope I don’t mess up the facts too badly.

We heard the choir sing “High On the Mountain Top.”

We watched a short video presentation about immigration in general and Irving Berlin in particular. We heard the choir sing, “God Bless America.”

We heard short remarks from Elder Allan F. Packer, FamilySearch chairman of the board, and a general authority of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints.

He mentioned research done at Emory University by Dr. Marshall Duke and Dr. Robyn Fivush. They found that the more children know about their family history, the greater their self-esteem and well being. (See “Do You Know…: The power of family history in adolescent identity and well-being.”)

Elder Packer also quoted Alex Haley:

In all of us there is a hunger, marrow deep, to know our heritage, to know who we are and where we came from. Without this enriching knowledge, there is a hollow yearning. No matter what our attainments in life, there is still a vacuum, emptiness, and the most disquieting loneliness.

Elder Packer reminded us of the great success of the 1940 U.S. Census Indexing Project. He then invited us to help out with the immigration project.

The choir finished with what I consider to be their trademark piece; it is one of my favorites. We heard them sing “Come, Thou Fount of Every Blessing.”

For more detail about the concert, see “RootsTech Irving Berlin Concert Highlights Need to Index Immigration Records.”