Tuesday, January 31, 2012

Free Book Scanning This Week in Salt Lake City

image

Drop off your books at the scanning booth
behind the Cyber Café.

Taking a page from Ancestry.com’s free scanning service at RootsTech 2011, this year FamilySearch is offering a free book scanning service. FamilySearch will scan your family or local history book, give you a PDF on a free flash drive, and publish the book online, and digitally preserve the book.

The offer is open to the general public since the public has access to the RootsTech expo hall. Sign up, drop off the book at the scanning booth in the morning, and pick it up at the end of the day along with your digital copy.

The book must meet the same guidelines as donations to the Family History Library. You must have a signed permission form from the copyright owner, or you must be the copyright owner, or the book must have been published prior to 1924 (presumably in the United States). Check the existing FamilySearch online book collection to see if they already have the book.

To allow more people to take part in this offer, FamilySearch is accepting books no longer than 400 pages. That was killer for me. The only qualifying books I own are too long. (I wonder what they would do if I signed up for two books and showed up with one book of 500 pages?)

Hurry! Slots are limited. Read more and sign up at http://rootstechbookscanning.eventbrite.com/.

Florida Records Access

US map with Florida highlightedIt is time for another in my continuing series on record accessibility. Information is taken from the Records Preservation and Access Committee (RPAC) white paper titled “Open Access to Public Records: a Genealogical Perspective.”

For Florida, as of 7 January 2012 the white paper lists record availability as follows

Record Type Year begins Access (Closed, Open, Restricted) Years Restricted Copy for Genealogical Purposes Statute Notes
Birth 1899 Closed    

Sec. 382.025 (1), .
(1995)

 
Marriage 1927 Open        
Divorce 1927 Open        
Death 1899 Restricted 50  

Sec. 382.008 (6), .
(1995

Excludes cause of death which is
considered confidential

Adoption   Closed     Sec. 63.162 (1) (b)

Operates the Florida Adoption Registry
(PDCFR)

How do you feel about having no access to birth records?

If you are a resident of the state, election year is a great time to let your state legislators know what you think about the state’s restrictions. Keep in mind the state’s legitimate need to prevent identity fraud. Then fight fear with facts.

We now return you to your regularly scheduled presidential election, already in progress…

Sunday, January 29, 2012

Family History Consultants Training

Family History Consultants of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints, along with priesthood leaders, family history center directors, and stake indexing directors are invited to free training sessions given as a track of the RootsTech conference being held this week, February 2-4 in Salt Lake City at the north end of the Salt Palace Convention Center.

The same classes are offered each of February 2nd, 3rd, and 4th. See the schedule online.

Elder Paul E. Koelliker of the SeventyConsultants and leaders are also invited to attend a Family History Devotional on Saturday the 4th from 11 am until Noon. The devotional speaker is Elder Paul E. Koelliker of the Seventy.

Interested attendees are invited to register at http://www.certain.com/system/profile/form/index.cfm?PKformID=0x12114038507 . Registered attendees will also be given entrance to the 8:30 am RootsTech keynote presentation.

See you at RootsTech!

Friday, January 27, 2012

Darned Missing Census Pages

Records say the darnedest things

We depend upon records to reveal the “truth” about our pasts.

Yet sometimes records have anomalies.
Some are amusing or humorous.
Some are interesting or weird.
Some are peculiar or suspicious.
Some are infuriating, even downright laughable.

Yes, Records are the Darnedest Things.”

Records Are the Darnedest Things: Darned Missing Census Pages

Ancestry.com is missing pages from the 1820 U.S. Census of Virginia and I bet I know why.

You can see (if you have a subscription) where one is missing by navigating to Virginia > Randolph > Beverly. Note that image 1 is page 265 and image 2 is page 267. Page 266 exists and contains names from B to G. But it is missing from Ancestry.com. The first few names are

Coffman, George
Cross, Joseph
Carpenter, Solomon

You can see another one in Virginia > Monongalia > Western Division. Jump to image 10, which is page 122. Go on to image 11 and you will see that it is page 124. Page 123 (aka page 51a) exists, but is missing from Ancestry.com. It contains names from G to H. Some of the missing names are

Glascock, Charles
Garlow, John
Gilbert, Stephen

There is a good reason—well, maybe a reason—the pages are missing. NARA missed the pages when it microfilmed the records! Maybe Ancestry.com will go back and photograph the missing pages. Until then: darned missing census pages!

For more information, see “Missing 1820 Census Pages,” West Virginia Archives & History News [a publication of the West Virginia Division of Culture and History], December 2003, 1; online archive (http://www.wvculture.org/history/ahnews/1203news.pdf : accessed 10 January 2012).

Wednesday, January 25, 2012

FamilySearch Posts Big Numbers

image

Earlier this month FamilySearch issued a Records Update with some pretty impressive numbers.

FamilySearch has recently surpassed 1,000 record collections and 2.5 billion searchable names. As for number of images, it looks like they will surpass a half billion images by the time they make their next update.

A quick review of available collections shows that the all important manuscript record types, census, church, and civil vital records, form the bulk of FamilySearch collections.

Monday, January 23, 2012

FamilySearch’s Shipley Munson

Shipley Munson sings with the Tabernacle Choir on 15 January 2011Note: This article will be of interest mainly to members of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints. Please skip today’s article if you are not interested.

How apropos it was that we listened to a recording of the Tabernacle Choir as we assembled to hear Shipley Munson, FamilySearch marketing director, at a recent seminar in Riverton, Utah. Munson has extensive marketing experience, two degrees from Harvard, an MBA from the University of Chicago, and speaks seven language.

Shipley Munson sings with the Tabernacle Choir on 15 January 2011And he is a member of the world-renowned Mormon Tabernacle Choir.

“My family likes to play “Where’s Waldo?” he said. Then he showed us a picture of the entire choir with his tiny figure circled. There was an arrow pointing to it. The arrow was labeled “Me!”

Munson asked family history consultants in the audience what problems—in their Church responsibilities as consultants—“kept them up at nights.” Some wished Church priesthood leaders would better support family history activities.

“Priesthood leaders will engage in Family History,” said Munson, “when they gain a testimony of its power to solve their problems in furthering the work of salvation, not our problems in furthering the work of family history.” 

Munson then asked a Church leader in attendance what kept him up at night. He mentioned several concerns, such as helping members of his congregation to understand the operations of the Holy Spirit.

Munson showed a 20 minute video composed of interviews recorded in congregations in Springfield, Illinois. Church congregations were helping members experiencing various life challenges such as marital problems and deaths of loved ones. The video demonstrated how family history activities and temple worship helped Church members having a variety of personal and family problems. “If you forget yourself in the service of others,’ said one, “you will find yourself. And family history is a vehicle to accomplish that.”

“It has turned our hearts to Heavenly Father.”


Family History Consultants can view the video for themselves at https://www.familysearch.org/consultant/.

Friday, January 20, 2012

South Carolina Records Availability

US map with South Carolina highlightedIt is time for another article on record accessibility. Information is taken from the Records Preservation and Access Committee (RPAC) white paper titled “Open Access to Public Records: a Genealogical Perspective.”

For South Carolina, as of 7 January 2012 the white paper lists record availability as follows

Record Type Year begins Access (Closed, Open, Restricted) Years Restricted Copy for Genealogical Purposes Statute Notes
Birth 1915 Restricted 100   44-63-80  
Marriage 1950 Restricted     44-63-86 Pre-1950 in County Office of the Probate
Divorce 1962 Restricted     44-63-86  
Death 1915 Restricted 50   44-63-84 Online Death Index 1915-1957.
Adoption   Closed     44-63-140  

If you are a resident of the state, election year is a great time to let your state legislators know what you think about the state’s restrictions. Keep in mind the state’s legitimate need to prevent identity fraud. Then fight fear with facts.

We now return you to your regularly scheduled presidential election, already in progress…

Wednesday, January 18, 2012

1940 Census Consortium

1940 US Census Community ProjectLast month FamilySearch, Archives.com, and findmypast.com announced a community project for indexing and publishing the 1940 US Federal Census. The census will be released by the government on 2 April 2012. The three will engage volunteers to index the census, and then it will be published for free on all three websites.

Additionally, Archives.com and findmypast.com will make “substantial financial contributions to make the 1940 US Census online name index possible and work with nonprofit FamilySearch to bring additional new records collections online.”

Ancestry.com had previously announced that it will also publish the 1940 census for free, though only through the end of 2013.

This should make for a good horse race… and a good comparison of the quality of FamilySearch indexes and Ancestry.com indexes.

The full text of the FamilySearch announcement can be read online.

Monday, January 16, 2012

Ancestry.com Reviews 2011 Accomplishments

Along with their look forward to 2012, Ancestry.com recently reviewed their 2011 accomplishments.

Database Title Published/ Updated Number of Records Number of Images

U.S. World War II Navy Muster Rolls, 1938-1949

May-July? 33 million 2 million

New Zealand, Electoral Rolls,
1853-1981

February 21 million 300,000

1930 Mexico National Census

September 13 million 300,000

1911 UK Census
  Wales
  England
  Scotland


May-Oct
May-Dec
May-Oct

2 million
20 million
2 million

1 million
15 million
1 million

U.S. Vitals Collections

? 51 million new ?

Ireland, Civil Registration, 1845-1958
  Births
  Marriages
  Deaths

September
9 million
5 million
6 million
None

California, Voter Registers, 1866-1898

July 4 million 70,000

U.S., Civil War Draft Registrations Records, 1863-1865

April-Nov 3 million 300,000

Civil War National Cemetery Collections

April ? More info None

Sons of the American Revolution Applications, 1889-1970

June 1 million 200,000
Yearbooks ? 35,000 books 7 million

U.S. Holocaust Memorial Museum Collections

Aug-Nov 30,000? None

U.S. Passport Applications, 1795-1925

Updated May 2 million 4 million

1910 U.S. Federal Census Improvements

Updated Jan 90 million 2 million

That’s about 270 million records and 33 million images.

Ancestry also pointed out improvements to the Ancestry.com iPad App, search improvements, and Family Tree Maker 2012.

Tuesday, January 10, 2012

New Hampshire Record Restrictions

US map, New Hampshire highlightedChristmas intruding on Thanksgiving? Retailers aren’t even in the same category as the U.S. presidential race. I’m ready for a break and thinking about record availability is just the break I need.

Fred Moss, a member of RPAC provided much needed clarification following my last article about the Records Preservation and Access Committee (RPAC). RPAC invites us to provide them updates if their table needs to be updated. Send updates to access@fgs.org. Moss also clarified the recommended restrictions (birth records for 100 years, deaths for 25 years, and providing open access to marriage and divorce records). In the words of the executive white paper titled “Open Access to Public Records: a Genealogical Perspective,”

We have made some recommendations representing the minimum public access to vital records that we view as essential. By doing so, our intent is to exhort those jurisdictions whose access provisions are more restrictive to move, at least, to that level. We support open records and it is definitely not our intent to suggest that the more “open” jurisdictions need to adopt more restrictive measures.

Thank you, Fred. Much appreciated.

Now, its on to New Hampshire. As of 7 January 2012 the white paper lists New Hampshire’s record availability as follows

Record Type Year begins Access (Closed, Open, Restricted) Years Restricted Copy for Genealogical Purposes Statute Notes
Birth 1901 Restricted   …People with a tangible interest. 5-C:102 & 105 5-C:9  
Marriage 1901? Restricted Pre-1948   5-C:102  
Divorce 1808? [sic] Restricted Pre-1948      
Death 1901? Restricted Pre-1948      
Adoption     Open   5-C:33 Open to adult adoptee.

I’m unclear on restrictions “pre-1948.” Are pre-1948 records restricted? That seems odd.

In any case, if you are a New Hampshire resident, contact your election year state legislators and let them know what you think about the state’s restrictions. Keep in mind the state’s legitimate need to prevent identity fraud. Then fight fear with facts.

We now return to your regularly scheduled presidential election, already in progress…

Monday, January 9, 2012

RootsTech Discount Ends Friday

RootsTech Family History ConferenceIf you haven’t registered for RootsTech yet, now’s the time. The $149 discounted price ends this Friday, the 13th. Then you’re looking at the regular $189.

Speaking of RootsTech, you can find yours truly on the schedule. I present “Genealogy Internet Gems” on Friday, 3 February, at 9:45. On Saturday at 1:45 I’m doing “Lassie! Go for Free Genealogy Help!

I don’t believe it has been announced yet, but I also may be moderating an unconference session. Opposite of a conference session where presenters talk to the audience, an unconference session is one in which the audience does the talking.

The downside of presenting is not being able to attend sessions at the same time. I’ll have to miss sessions by Dan Lynch, Stephen Morse, Josh Taylor, Laura Prescott, Lisa Louise Cooke, and others. Rats!

Remember the discount ends Friday, the 13th. It would be most unlucky for you to miss this deadline.

Friday, January 6, 2012

The Darned Lazy Census Enumerators

Records say the darnedest things

We depend upon records to reveal the “truth” about our pasts.

Yet sometimes records have anomalies.
Some are amusing or humorous.
Some are interesting or weird.
Some are peculiar or suspicious.
Some are infuriating, even downright laughable.

Yes, Records are the Darnedest Things.”

Records Are the Darnedest Things: Lazy Census Enumerators

Reader TomVote wrote to point out a darned record. He “thought [we] might get a kick out of it.” In the 1870 US Census, search for Busti, Chautauqua, New York. Here’s what you’ll get:

1870 census: Swedes Can't Talk

And there’s a lot more where that came from.

By the way, don’t bother trying to find this example on FamilySearch.org. If you get the same results I do, FamilySearch will block you at every avenue.

Don’t bother searching for Busti or Chautauqua. As nearly as I can tell, FamilySearch doesn’t know about these places in their 1870 census index. Strange, because they are present in the browse hierarchy.

Don’t bother searching for “Swedes Cant Talk.” Or “Swedes, Cant Talk.” Or “Cant Talk, Swedes.” Or any other combination of wildcards or permutations. Did they remove these entries? I hope not. I consider it arrogant whenever a genealogical publisher thinks they know more than all the genealogists in the world. (Remember Ancestry.com removing census images without names?)

Thank you, TomVote, for pointing out this example of records saying the darnedest things.

Wednesday, January 4, 2012

Iowa, RPAC, and Voting

The Great Seal of the State of IowaNo, I am not about to rehash what today’s news is telling us about Iowa and political PACs. Instead, I thought this was a good opportunity to talk about RPAC and the availability of Iowa’s vital records.

RPAC is the Records Preservation and Access Committee, a joint committee of the Federation of Genealogical Societies, the National Genealogical Society, the International Association of Jewish Genealogical Societies and other participants. One aspect of RPAC’s mission is to advise the genealogical community about legislation and laws affecting access to public records with genealogical value.

My understanding is, RPAC’s non-profit status precludes it from actively lobbying governments. They inform. Action is up to us.

That said, RPAC advises against acting out of panic. We don’t want to “exacerbate otherwise negotiable issues.”

One of the publications of RPAC is an executive white paper titled “Open Access to Public Records: a Genealogical Perspective.” It includes a table listing state-by-state availability of vital records. Here’s the entry for Iowa (current as of 18 December 2009):

State Record Type Year Begins Access (Closed, Open, Restricted) Years Restricted Copy for Genealogical Purposes Statute Notes
Iowa Birth 1880 Restricted 75 Special access permits given to genealogists 144.43 Out-of-wedlock, fetal death and adoptive birth records closed
  Marriage 1880 Restricted 75   144.43  
  Divorce   Restricted 75   144.43  
  Death 1880 Restricted 75   144.43  
  Adoption   Closed        

If I understand the publication correctly, RPAC recommends restricting birth records for 100 years, deaths for 25 years, and providing open access to marriage and divorce records.

According to the white paper, Iowa restricts access of all vital records to 75 years. Is that still the case? Any truth to the rumor that the department of health is imposing a more stringent policy? If you have experience researching in Iowa, I’d like to confirm or put this rumor to bed.

If you live in Iowa and want more access to vital records, contact your state legislators and let your vote be heard.

For more information, visit the RPAC website at http://www.fgs.org/rpac .

Tuesday, January 3, 2012

Ancestry.com Story Upload Problems

Ancestry.com is Cutting Information Off Truncated StoriesOne of the areas that Ancestry.com excels in is media/story upload. I have a lot of stuff uploaded to Ancestry.com because it gives me a backup copy and because I love to share. I find a lot of my uploads are copied extensively and I find it very gratifying.

As I write the first draft of this article, my current genealogy project is uploading deed transcriptions done by my father before his passing. He spent quite a bit of time producing these and I’m sure he is glad to see me put them somewhere where more people can benefit from them.

Going back over the uploaded stories, I was shocked to find that Ancestry.com had truncated one of them! I first attributed it to my own error. I went back through them all to see if I messed up any other. When I came across a second one, I investigated and found the file was perfect on my computer.

One bad file is a fluke. Two bad files is an Ancestry bug. Worse for them, it is intermittent. That is, it doesn’t happen every time. That kind of bug is terribly difficult to find and fix. I’m expecting it will be many weeks before Ancestry finds and fixes this one.

While scrutinizing this bug, I discovered several of the files that I thought I had uploaded were missing. I found on one occasion that only 1 of 2 files was uploaded. In another instance only 3 of 4 uploaded.

I also found that if a filename has a period in the middle, the title of the resulting story is truncated at the first period. Ancestry ought to remove the extension, but no more.

As long as I’m in a complaining mood, may I complain about Ancestry’s handling of text stories. To view the story, one must download the file. I think they should display it like they do stories entered online.

Another thing I dislike is that they flip the order of uploaded files. When I upload a batch of files, they rearrange them so that the first file is last and the last is first. Biblical, yes. Convenient, no.

I’ve reported the problems to Ancestry.com. They are seriously looking into them. As I say, it is very difficult to fix intermittent bugs. You may never see the bugs I see. It may be my 64-bit Windows. It may be my browser. It may be that one of Ancestry’s 1,000s of servers is acting up. It may be the cookies on my computer. Or it may be the combination of all these.

When uploading stories, heed this warning: Carefully check all the story files you upload! I uploaded over 90 files and I was glad I did. And I confess that one or two problems were my own.

Carefully check. Enough said.

Monday, January 2, 2012

Ancestry.com 2012 Plans

Ancestry.com is planning new content for 2012Over the holidays Ancestry.com CEO, Tim Sullivan, announced “12 things you can count on from Ancestry.com in 2012.” There aren’t really 12. They’ve often stuffed multiple items into one so that the resulting count is 12. Some of them are:

New Content

  • 1940 U.S. Federal Census.
  • Fully indexed 1911 UK Census.
  • More U.S. state censuses.
  • Vital records from Pennsylvania and Massachusetts,
  • Parish records from Lancashire and the city of Manchester and UK non-conformist records. Ancestry.com claims the largest collection of digitized parish records. Really? Have they outstripped FamilySearch’s venerable International Genealogical Index? Users the world over know to go there as their first pass for English parish coverage.
  • U.S. Quaker records. Ancestry alluded to the Quaker records several years ago in one of their Bloggers’ Day presentations. I’m not certain they thought the wait would be so long. It’s nice the project is seeing the light of day.

Shaky Leaves Hinting System

  • Ancestry is making improvements to their Shaky Leaves hinting system. They are adding a dedicated page so users can see a list of pending hints.
  • They say they are improving photograph related hints. I hope that means they are improving their searching algorithm for photos and user-submitted stories. I always get lists of barely related results.
  • They’re developing a method of identifying entire collections that likely relate to your family. I hope this is a better treatment of family genealogy books. Their hinting system has long ignored books about my ancestral lines. I’m related to the extensive Hendricks family of New Amsterdam, but the Hendricks book—with thousands of my relatives—is never returned in search results. Granted, it is extremely difficult to accurately return matches from OCRed books, but when an entire book is about a surname of interest, it would be nice to be alerted to its presence. The same is true for local histories about the communities and periods for where and when my ancestors resided.

Other New Website Features

  • They are releasing a new image viewer. Is it my imagination, or didn’t they already do that? Just as FamilySearch was moving away from their user-disliked Flash viewer towards an HTML-based viewer like Ancestry’s Basic Viewer, Ancestry announced they were moving towards a Flash Viewer.
  • Ancestry also alluded to a new treatment for U.S. censuses, although they didn’t say much more than it will work with individual lines from the censuses.
  • Ancestry says they will return to the days of a What’s New page. Ancestry had such a page in the pre-going public days. They got really paranoid at the time and stopped sharing lots of information with the public and with bloggers. I never understood how they felt comfortable releasing information to small groups of financial analysts in semi-private phone meetings, but wouldn’t release non-material news about incidental improvements to dozens of members of the media/blogger community. (Private message to Heather: can you work on that? Embargo us if you must, but…)

Non-website Features

  • Ancestry’s cool-looking iPad app is coming to Android. Reviewing their smart phone app is high on my to-do list. First of all, though, I’ve got to get a smarter smart phone. (When did my top-of-the-line smart phone becomes so dumb?)
  • It sounds like they are loosening a little bit the ability to share records via social networking. That makes sense. Letting thousands and tens of thousands of records slip to freedom outside their pay wall hardly damages the value of a subscription giving access to a collection I estimate to be around 7 billion records.
  • I’ve reported the hiring of DNA experts and wondered what new features that would bring. Ancestry says to expect the enhancements this year, although they say little more than the ability to identify the ethnicity of your ancestors.

Expertise

  • “Demonstrations from our own team of experts. We’ll be hosting Q&A sessions…to tackle the toughest research challenges.”

Ancestry leads FamilySearch in so many ways, it is glaringly the holes in which they don’t:

  • FamilySearch’s extensive microfilm collection
  • Its world wide network of family history centers with
  • an army of family history consultants ready and willing to give hands-on help
  • The unrivaled Salt Lake Family History Library, and
  • the treasure-trove of expertise of its reference librarians.

You can’t go to a major genealogical conference without seeing a large number of FamilySearch experts presenting on various research topics. Ancestry? A smattering of sessions advertising and assisting users in the use of their products.

True, my glowing adjectives reflect my current employment. However, I have no qualms pointing out that for years FamilySearch has been running a distant second to Ancestry in so many ways.

What will we see in 2012? Will Ancestry lengthen its lead, additionally closing gaps in its service offerings? Will FamilySearch successfully empty its vast vault holdings onto the net, surpassing Ancestry’s online content?

Stay tuned…