Mandatory Reading for all those using FamilySearch Family Tree

Sometimes I feel blind, deaf and dumb (even more than I am normally). This last week was the National Genealogical Society Conference in Las Vegas, Nevada. Although Las Vegas is only a few hours away, we had prior commitments that prevented attendance at the conference. I did miss several important announcements and, of course, the opportunity to talk to people from around the world. But most of all, I felt out-of-touch i.e. deaf and dumb. Sometimes reading the blog posts is a good substitute and I thank Randy Seaver and The Ancestry Insider among many others for their contributions to keeping me informed.

Today The Ancestry Insider published what in the news industry would be considered a scoop. The blog post is entitled, "#NGS2013 - Futures for FamilySearch Family Tree." This post should be mandatory reading for anyone trying to work with FamilySearch.org's Family Tree, if only for the reason that it gives hope and a very weak light at the end of the tunnel.

Of course, I can't let this gem of a post go by without comments. I fully realize that I am not responding directly to what Ron Tanner of FamilySearch may have said, but to what The Ancestry Insider has written, but I trust that the reporting was fair and accurate because of the source.

Understand that my progress in doing any additional meaningful work at all with FamilySearch Family Tree ends at about four generations or so up my pedigree. At that point, virtually every ancestor has multiple submissions that put them into the category of Individuals of Unusual Size (IOUSs). This essentially means that there are still multiple pedigrees (attached to multiple individuals) out there that cannot be resolved by merging. This issue is addressed in the blog post by the AI, as follows:

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.”

This statement has been made several times in the past, but it is reassuring to have it said again. For me, and many, many other users of the program, it is the deal maker or breaker. Either get it fixed or the program doesn't work at all. I answer questions about this issue multiple times a day when I am working with patrons at the Mesa FamilySearch Library. The latest 10 May 2013 version of the Family Tree manual, Using the FamilySearch Family Tree A Reference Guide (10 May 2013) LDS Version states as follows at page 146, about merging:

You cannot merge records in the following situations:
• The gender on one record is male, and the other is female.
• One record indicates the person is alive; the other is deceased.
• Both records come from the membership records of The Church of Jesus Christ of
Latter-day Saints.
• One of the records came from new.familysearch.org, where it has been combined
with too many other records.
• The duplicate record has already been deleted due to another merge.
• One of the records has restrictions that would prevent it from being changed.

Apparently, there is no solution to this problem from the standpoint of the user. We just have to wait until the problem is resolved by FamilySearch.

Some of the other developments coming in FamilySearch Family Tree are nice but not deal breakers. For example:

• Printable family group sheets and pedigree charts
• Taking a photograph and making a source out of it
• Notes and copied notes from New.FamilySearch.org
• Sources from New.FamilySearch.org

All of these have been discussed at one time or another in both public and private.  The second item above, the ability to take a photograph and make it a source, may refer to adding your own documents as sources? That is speculation on my part.

The AI also mentions the ability to "match records in historical collections to ancestors in the tree." This would be a huge development and hopefully similar to what is being done now by MyHeritage.com and Ancestry.com with their family trees. Perhaps an agreement with one or the other is in the offing to implement this feature?

There is quite a bit about preventing or solving "revert wars." The AI uses the term "toggle war." As a long time user of the FamilySearch.org Research Wiki, I see this as a potential problem, but not as one that occurs very often. There are already a number of features built into Family Tree that discourage this type of behavior. I wonder if any revert wars have already been reported to FamilySearch? The solution, as outlined in the post, is simple; lock the program to the participants.

Attaching records to an entire family would be a huge timesaver. Of course, there are other items mentioned but there is no timetable for their implementation and some of the features may simply be on a wish list. But it is nice to get a peek at the future, even through my deafness and dumbness.

Memorial Day Free Access to findmypast.com Military Records

In honor of Memorial Day on May 27, and in remembrance of all who died while serving our country, findmypast.com will offer its collection of US and International military records for free in the days leading up to national observance.

With more than 26 million US and International military records available, findmypast.com is encouraging people to explore and learn about the heroic efforts of their ancestors this Memorial Day. Record sets such as ‘Draft Registration Cards,’ ‘Casualties Returned Alive,’ ‘POWs’ and others will offer a captivating glimpse into the lives and experiences of our veteran ancestors.

The US and International military records will be available free of charge starting at midnight EDT on Thursday, May 23 until midnight EDT on Monday, May 27. Anyone can access the records by registering for free at findmypast.com. 

Why I am proud to be a genealogist and do not apologize to anyone

My last post started me thinking. To increase my awareness of the topic, I am also reading a very interesting book about the history of genealogy, as such, that reinforces my thoughts. (See Weil, François. Family Trees: A History of Genealogy in America. 2013). It is certainly true that genealogy and genealogist come from a highly checkered past. So why would anyone want to be associated with genealogy? I am not sure if that is a rhetorical question or not.

I fully realize after more than thirty years of doing genealogical research, that I am not going to become popular or even mildly tolerated by most people because of my genealogical interests. In fact, I have frequently been the target of outright hostility. But I don't really care about that aspect of the work. I am proud to be a genealogist for deeper reasons that popularity and social acceptance.

Take this blog for an example. There are thousands of topics I could have written about that would have been more popular. If I was seeking a large audience and popularity, I certainly choose the wrong subject matter. But the rewards are more than popularity, they go far deeper than making money or becoming well known. None of those categories fit at all well into the genealogical mold.

So what is the motivation and why would I continue to plod along, day after day, persistently adding to the pile of my family's history? I think the answer to that question is not simple. My personal motivations for doing genealogy, teaching genealogy and writing about it, day after day, can hardly be either easily or briefly explained. The easiest explanation for my passion for genealogy, would be to attribute it to some of my basic religious beliefs. But I share those religious beliefs with lots of other people and very, very few of those people have even a passing interest in genealogy. In fact, some of them are the most hostile. So, although there may be religious component, it is not a satisfying answer to the basic question.

Basically, I started and I would like to see the job through to the end. In my heart, I know this is not possible, but until the last name on the most remote family is accounted for, I will keep working.

In my case, genealogy is more of a compulsion, rather than an interest. It is due more to need and desire  than to any sense of duty or obligation. I see it as a positive task that needs to be done and needs to be done right. When I see the mistakes of the past, I look on those mistakes as opportunities to make corrections. Like art and music, genealogy is worth doing for its own sake and needs no deep or philosophical justification. Besides, after working with living clients for the past 39 years, it is refreshing to deal with dead ones.

No matter what the motivation, I am proud and happy to be a genealogist. I don't really care if people ignore me or whatever because of my interest, but I will continue to work until I am too old to do so.

Are Genealogists being defined out of Family History?

The tag line on a recent family history promotion entitled "Family History is for Everyone" is "Family history is much more than dates, records, and research." The idea here is apparently to involve a wider audience in the area of family history, which is an extremely laudable goal. But isn't the implication that dates, records and research are not appealing and that these aspects of "family history" need to be downplayed so that it will have a "broader" appeal. This isn't just about avoiding the term "genealogy," this is about how we-who-are-actively-involved are being portrayed.

This promotion goes on to list ten suggested activities. Interestingly, I have done every single one of the suggested activities at some time in my genealogical career and most of the genealogists I know have also done most if not all of the listed activities. Why then are these activities something that is in contrast to the core activities of dates, records and research? These are things we, as genealogists, have been doing all along and I might add, without recognition or an audience. For example, my daughter has had a fabulous family history blog for years and very, very few of the family members, even those who know about it, take the time to even read the stories and look at the photographs.

For example, I have been adding photos, sources and information to FamilySearch.org's Family Tree now for over a year. Unless I go back many generations, I can find no indication that anyone else (other than my one daughter) has even looked at the information online.

Interestingly, none of the suggested activities are directly aimed at finding and identifying your ancestors. How do you move from something such as interviewing family members and sharing their stories online, to finding the identity of unknown family members. How do you interview someone you cannot identify?

Dates, records and research are the engine that drives this family history vehicle, not something that can be ignored. Some of the suggested activities fall into the category of the survey in the research cycle, but other of the activities are things you do after your research has provided names, stories and photos to share. What is missing is the connection between the listed activities and where the information comes from. I fully realize that we can all ride in the car and that we don't all have to be mechanics, but without the mechanics, the car doesn't run.

I acknowledge that I personally have not done everything I could do to involve my family in family history. But it is hard to confront absolute and total indifference. I was talking to some friends I hadn't seen for a while and they politely asked what I had been doing lately, when I mentioned genealogy, they quickly changed the subject and walked away.  What are the new, budding family historians going to do when they meet this kind of reaction?

I applaud the effort being made to involve a wider audience in family history, but how are these new family historians going to move on to the next step of research, records and yes, dates? Is this simply a public relations problem? Or is there something more to genealogy than meets the eye here?

Pinterest-like interface comes to Google+

Google+ had some significant changes in the last day or so. The changes were announced at the keynote address at the Google I/O 2013 conference. The main visual change is that the display on Google+ adapts to single, double or triple columns depending on the size of the display. Google+ also adds hashtags to create ranked searches from the whole database of posts. Google is also adding hashtags by image recognition even if the post does not mention the subject of a photo. Google also released an entirely new Google Hangout application. Conversations on Hangouts are preserved so that the conversation can last for an extended period of time, even years.

I am sure that there will be some extensive discussion about the new additions to Google+ but it looks like there may be a whole set of tools that could be used if we all had time away from Facebook and Pinterest.

I noticed that the three column mode only showed up when I enlarged the window past a certain point on my large display. There are some extensive additions to the way photos are displayed and handled, hence the relationship to Pinterest. Some of the changes have been implemented previously but are now fully available, such as the huge photos that can be put on your profile page (see screenshot above).

What I see is an integration of the reader concept into Google+, trying to make the streams consolidated so you aren't going to more than one place to view content. But it is not yet, and may never be, a replacement for a reader or aggregator.

What Happened to FamilySearch TechTips?

For quite some time, I was writing regularly for a website called FamilySearch TechTips. As you can see from the link, the site is still online, but nothing has been added to the site since last year, 2012. The content of the site, to some extent, had been rolled over to the more general FamilySearch.org Blog. The FamilySearch Blog enjoyed frontpage and direct, menu bar link status in the older version of the FamilySearch.org website, but with the makeover, the Blog has been relegated to a single link at the bottom of the startup page in between "About" and "Feedback." The Blog originally had links to content, including TechTips, but now the Blog is pretty simple and generic. Here is a screenshot of the posts through 15 May 2013:

In my Chrome browser, the menu items, including a link to TechTips and other resources is located at the bottom of the page. Here is a screenshot of the bottom of the page:

This menu may appear at the top of the page depending on your browser. The link to TechTips goes to the Archives of TechTips. Here is a screen shot:

I haven't heard anything about the future of this portion of the site and haven't been contacted about further contributions. There are several FamilySearch websites and portions of websites that seem to be in the same category.

Searching for Genealogy - What works and what doesn't

Genealogists who are actively doing research, spend considerable time searching for information. Obviously, as technology and the Internet have become pervasive, a lot of that time is spent looking for information on or in websites. To do this, we collectively rely on a variety of search engines (programs that search either the Web at large or a specific database). The two extremes of our searches involve either no responses or at the opposite end of the spectrum of results, millions of responses including mostly "false positives." 

In the past, I have compared both the general online search engines, such as Google, Bing and others, as well as individual database search engines. In doing this, I have used the name of my Great-grandfather as a search term. This was done for a variety of reasons, primarily because I already know approximately how much information is contained on the Web about him and because his name was just distinctive enough to be a good indication of the effectiveness of the search engine's ability to filter out false positives. 

I recent did a search for another ancestor in a major online database and got some interesting results. My search included his name and other information including his date and place of birth and date and place of death. However, the results came back with some limited information on the ancestor but many more false positives, all of which were for people who did not match either the birth date (i.e. lived before) or the death date (i.e. lived after). For example, the ancestor died in the 1890s, but I consistently got suggested matches for U.S. Census records after 1900. This started me thinking as to why the programmers added those types of fields into their search terms if the program was not sophisticated enough to make those types of distinctions. 

What is more frustrating than false positives is a complete lack of response, where the search engine returns no matches. This happens frequently, even when I search for a very common name or even a common place. Usually, the problem lies with something ridiculous such as adding or not adding an initial capital letter or something similar. It is more common when I am searching for a particular string of words or letters. For example, if I enclose the name in quotation marks to specify the entire name. Of course, it is entirely possible that the person is listed in the database but not with that specific name. 

So, in order to judge the effectiveness of any particular search engine, I decided that looking for names was a good way to judge whether or not a the program worked and how it worked. I also occurred to me that I should use a specific document that I know exists as a test. I decided to combine the two and add a book about my Great-grandfather, Henry Martin Tanner, as an additional test of the search engines capability. Of course, this would not help if the database did not have any book titles or names, but the same principle could apply, I would just have to look for a general terms and then get more specific, adapting the searches to the type of information I expected from the database.

It has been some time since I compared the general search engines, so I thought I would get right down to business with a quick review of where they stand today and then go on to some more specific types of database searches. The book I chose is as follows:

Tanner, George S. Henry Martin Tanner; Joseph City, Arizona Pioneer, Born June 11, 1852, San Bernardino, California, Died March 21, 1935, Gilbert, Arizona. 1964.

This book had a very limited printing. The title of the book contains some very generally available search terms, such as Arizona, California and pioneer and I know if can find the book immediately in WorldCat.org because it is in quite a large number of libraries around the United States. Additionally, I know the book has been digitized by FamilySearch and a digital copy is available through the FamilySearch Catalog on FamilySearch.org. Finally, Henry Tanner has tens of thousands of living descendants and many of them are involved some way or another in genealogy. So, if I do not find anything, the problem does not lie with a lack of availability. 

Here are the results of my searches with some general online search engines. I used just the first part of the name of the book as the search term, "Henry Martin Tanner; Joseph City, Arizona Pioneer."

Google.com

The first search in Google showed more than 50 exact results to references to the book before the entries became so attenuated to be referring to other topics. However, a search in Google Books for the book, as I have noted before, indicated that no digitized copy was available. This is likely due to the fact that the FamilySearch (Family History) Library Catalog is not "online" as yet. 

Bing.com

Microsoft is still striking out. Bing.com found only 9 references to the book and had false positives and totally unrelated results within the first three entries. It sent me to Facebook and to other unrelated individuals immediately. 

Mocavo.com

This genealogically oriented search engine and website has come a long way. I have been very impressed with their progress. But in finding this book, it had 10 results, but none of them were to the location of the book, merely to websites where the book had been quoted. 

Yahoo.com

Since Yahoo.com uses the Google search engine, you would expect similar results but disappointedly, Yahoo.com struck out with results similar to Bing.com; only 9 direct results even going on to over four pages. 

Ask.com

I had a hard time with this one. Ask.com gave totally unresponsive results immediately. One interesting one, the fourth response was to the Biography of Doc Holliday. Hmm. I wonder if there is a connection? It did have possibly 10 references to the book but they were surrounded by totally false positives that did not even have a majority of the search words. 

Aol.com

Aol.com actually didn't do too bad. It made about 14 hits before it got so vague as to be useless. But those were still mixed in with the first 4 pages of search results. It has the same problem as Ask.com, mixing in totally unrelated items that do not match any of the search words. 

Dogpile.com

I have searched in this one in the past, so I decided to throw it into the comparison. Except for trying to sell me hotel rates in Joseph City, Arizona, it did have only 8 results in the first 4 pages, giving it a very low score in this comparison. 

I guess I gave up after Dogpile.com, there didn't seem to be any point in prolonging the comparison. 

Even if you are anti-Google, for whatever reason, you can't argue with results. The point here is obvious. If you are looking for genealogical information and don't want hotel reservations or Facebook, you might want to stick with Google. But realize that even Google couldn't find the online, digitized copy of the book. More about this later. The clue is in this post: I found the book in WorldCat.org.