Wednesday, August 31, 2016

Beta Test to Earn Free Year Subscription to Twile

I received the following invitation from FamilySearch:

image

As someone who attended last year’s Innovator Summit at RootsTech, you may remember Twile, who was featured in the Innovator Showdown. They’d like your help to test an exciting new integration with FamilySearch.

Twile (www.twile.com) allows you to build an interactive time line of your family's past, present, and future, made up of milestones—such as births, marriages and deaths—allowing you to tell the story of your family from your earliest known ancestor right through to today. The UK-based startup went home with two awards in February, including People's Choice (if you missed it, watch it again here.)

FAMILYSEARCH INTEGRATION

Over the past few months, we have been working closely to support Twile with a significant piece of development to integrate their service with FamilySearch. The integration will allow FamilySearch users to import their trees and memories into Twile and keep their files all up to date as research continues. Photos and events will be automatically added to a private Twile time line for users to share with their family.

TWILE NEEDS YOUR HELP TO MAKE IT AWESOME!

We know you support innovation and product development, so we're asking for your help. Twile has a beta version of the service and is looking for some feedback on how user-friendly the process is before the software goes live. If you would be interested in helping out, let us know!

Send an email to Twile Co-Founder Kelly at kelly.marsden@twile.com, and she will be in touch to arrange a date and time to contact you during September.

TO SAY THANKS...

Twile will be offering all beta testers a 12-month Twile family package worth $129.99.

ALL YOU WILL NEED:

  • A laptop
  • A FamilySearch tree
  • Skype
  • Thoughts, opinions, and suggestions about the new features. Please “speak aloud” and be honest!

Many thanks!

Stop by Springfield, Win Prizes - #FGS2016

The main part of the 2016 conference of the Federation of Genealogical Societies starts tomorrow, 1 September 2016 in Springfield, Illinois at the Prairie Capital Convention Center. You don’t have to be a member of a genealogical society to go. Registration onsite begins Wednesday from 7am to 6pm (except during lunch, 11:30-12:30). Registration on Thursday runs 7am to 2pm. Friday and Saturday hours are 7am to 10am. For more information, visit http://www.fgsconference.org.

FGS 2016 Conference

If attendance isn’t in your budget, but you live in the area, consider stopping by the free exhibit hall. In the exhibit hall there are a number of presentations you can attend, again, for free. Those in the demo area start 10 minutes after each hour. The schedule, as of 1 August was:

Thursday, 1 September 2016
Thursday Demo Area Schedule for FGS 2016
Note that Ancestry.com’s Juliana Szucs presents at 12:10. (Did you know that FGS was founded in Juliana’s mother’s dining room back in Illinois in 1975?) FamilySearch’s Mike Provard presents at 4:10.

Friday, 2 September 2016
Friday Demo Area Schedule for FGS 2016
Notice that FamilySearch’s Robert Kehrer presents at 1:10.

Saturday, 3 September 2016
Saturday Demo Area Schedule for FGS 2016
Notice that AncestryDNA’s Anna Swayne presents at 11:10.

FamilySearch makes 30 minute presentations in their booth. Most are between regular conference sessions.

  Thursday
10:00 am Searching for Elusive Records
10:30 am Publishing the World’s Genealogy Records
Noon FamilySearch Hinting
12:30 pm FamilySearch Mobile Apps
1:00 pm Searching on FamilySearch
1:30 pm FamilySearch Family Tree
3:00 pm Publishing the World’s Genealogy Records

Friday:

  Friday
10:00 am  
10:30 am FamilySearch and Partners
Noon FamilySearch Mobile Apps
12:30 pm FamilySearch and Partners
1:00 pm FamilySearch Hinting
1:30 pm FamilySearch Photos and Stories
3:00 pm FamilySearch Family Tree

Saturday:

  Saturday
10:00 am  
10:30 am FamilySearch Mobile Apps
Noon Searching for Elusive Records
12:30 pm FamilySearch Hinting
1:00 pm FamilySearch Indexing
1:30 pm  
3:00 pm  

Ancestry also teaches classes in their booth. They post schedules once the hall opens. I’ll try and publish their schedule once I know it, perhaps on my Facebook page.

Genealogy Gems’ Lisa Louise Cooke is again presenting 30 minute classes in her booth (#200), according to her blog. She is joined this time by Diahan Southard (Your DNA Guide) and Jim Beidler (Family Tree Magazine). Their schedule is:

FGS 2016 Genealogy Gems booth schedule

Other vendors will gladly teach you anything you want to know about their products. Some will give you discounts for stopping by and talking with them. See the list of exhibitors here.

The exhibit hall includes a Cyber Café (sponsored by Ancestry, Lexmark, and MyHeritage) adjacent to the demo area.

While you won't find food or drink in this café, it is the perfect place to relax and check e-mail…or recharge your phone, iPad, table, or laptop. It is open during Exhibit Hall hours on Thursday, Friday, and Saturday.

The exhibit hall hours are

  • Thursday, 9:30am – 5pm
  • Friday, 9am-5pm
  • Saturday, 9am-3pm

To sweeten the pot, I have a few items I’ll try to give to one person who comes to the exhibit hall who isn’t registered for the conference. I received some items in my conference bag that I am willing to give away. They are:

  • An FGS conference tote bag
  • About 30 door prize tickets
  • A $10 cash back coupon – Buy something from a vendor, have them notarize the coupon, and redeem it for $10 cash back.
  • A coupon for $50 off Family Tree Maker.
  • (Sorry; I’ve lost my conference passport, so I can’t give that away.)
  • And you get to meet the Ancestry Insider in person.

Okay; that last one is probably more a downside. Be that as it may, if you want the items, send me an email with “FGS Items Request” in the subject line. I’ll pick someone and make some attempt to meet them and give them the items. I make no guarantees and you promise you won’t hold me responsible for anything that happens in connection with the items.

Hope to see you in Springfield!

Tuesday, August 30, 2016

Ancestry Library Edition Bookmark from Librarian’s Day – #FGS2016

I’m in Springfield, Illinois for the 2016 conference of the Federation of Genealogical Societies. The main sessions start Thursday, 1 September 2016, in the Prairie Capital Convention Center, but I attended Librarians’ Day on Tuesday, 30 August 2016. ProQuest sponsored the day and provided attendees a few bookmarks about some genealogy products they sell to libraries. If you use these products at your library (or at home with your own subscription), you may benefit from them.

Here is the Ancestry Library Edition bookmark:

Ancestry Library Edition bookmark by ProQuest

Pre-FGS 2016 Ketchup

Insider KetchupI’m headed off to the 2016 Federation of Genealogical Societies Conference in Springfield, Illinois. Tomorrow I’ll be turning my focus over to the conference for the remainder of this week. Time to ketchup.

FamilySearch tree bullet On Friday, FamilySearch released its “What’s New” for August.

  • FamilySearch added the ability to quickly attached unindexed FamilySearch Historical Records as sources in FamilySearch Family Tree.
  • They will soon release a new home page. It will provide individualized information for you based on your activity in Family Tree, photos and stories others have posted about your relatives, recommended tasks, and recently viewed persons.
  • They have changed which page you go to when you select Memories in the menu bar. For a while it went straight to gallery. Now they’ve restored a landing page from which you can go to various parts of the Memories section of FamilySearch.org.
  • As I reported during the BYU conference, the Memories App now provides a suggested list of questions that you can ask of a relative.
  • They added a Search Historical Records option to the main menu of the Family Tree mobile app. It just takes you to the Search Historical Records section on the web.
  • Like the person page on FamilySearch Family Tree on the web, you can tap a search button and search for that person either in Family Tree or on Ancestry.com.
  • In the Family Tree mobile app you can add Notes about a person.
  • In the Family Tree mobile app they added a page to view all memories about a person.
  • In Family Tree on iOS (Android coming soon), you can view a map showing the location of an event in a person’s life.

For more information, see “What’s New on FamilySearch—August 2016” on the FamilySearch blog.

Bullet Ancestry.com Reader BKip pointed out that Ancestry.com has done something relative to the RootsWeb free pages manager at http://freepages.rootsweb.ancestry.com/fileman/file_manager.cgi. It now returns a different error message. That’s good in the sense that it means they’ve turned their attention to this portion of the RootsWeb website.

FamilySearch tree bullet FamilySearch is presenting a week-long European Family History Conference, online or in person at the Family History Library in Salt Lake City. In person seating is limited to 190 and online participation to 500, so register soon. Lab participation is even more limited, 26 onsite and 100 online. The conference is free and will be held 12-16 September 2016. It is for beginner and intermediate genealogists. “Explore such topics as census, church, immigration, and vital records. Learn more about German, Swiss, Russian, and Polish research. Discover new techniques, strategies, and methodology to apply to your genealogical research problems.” A syllabus will be available for anyone to download. For more information, see “European Family History Conference” on the FamilySearch blog.

BulletTree I came across a record set on Findmypast for a database that I think they obtained through the Mocavo purchase: The California birth index. It should be viewable for free, but I wasn’t able to figure out how. Has anyone else found a way to view the former Mocavo databases for free on Findmypast? Let everyone know. I wonder if Findmypast will put together a page listing all the Mocavo databases. That would be a good way to attract potential customers. I could only find a couple Mocavo databases mentioned online: the California birth index, the California death index, the Social Security Death Index, and the Connecticut death index.

FamilySearch tree bullet Judging from his slides, I missed a good presentation about FamilySearch at the July 2016 Riverton FamilySearch Library Saturday Seminar by Dan Peay. While a lot of the information was directed at members of The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints, some might be of general interest. Dan showed that FamilySearch’s executive leadership from the Church—the FamilySearch board of directors, if you will—has changed. Elder Allan Packer has been replace by Elder Bradley D. Foster as the executive director (chairman of the board). He is assisted by directors with regional assignments: Elder C. Scott Grow over the United States and Canada, Elder Eduardo Gavarret over the rest of the Americas, Elder Ian S. Ardern over southern Asia, Japan, Australia, and New Zealand, and Elder Erich W. Kopischke over Africa, Europe, and north Asia. Rod DeGiulio, formerly over the Records Division of FamilySearch, now leads a division named Priesthood Area Support, with direct reports corresponding to each of the aforementioned areas of the world.

Dan showed some numbers: 6.0 B searchable names, 1.5 M new names daily, 18 P [petabytes] digital storage.

Monday, August 29, 2016

Monday Mailbox: FamilySearch Indexing

The Ancestry Insider's Monday MailboxIn response to my article about Jim Ericson’s frank talk about FamilySearch Indexing, several readers posed some frank questions. In the spirit of Jim’s talk, I’m going to give some frank answers.

Dear Ancestry Insider,

Are any records going to be every-name indexed, such as (say) partitions in Chancery, petitions for administration listing (perhaps dozens of) heirs, wills, or deeds?

Signed,
Geolover

Dear Geolover,

I noticed this morning in the Kentucky marriage record project in FamilySearch Indexing that FamilySearch is not indexing the birth places of the bride, her parents, the groom, or his parents. Because it is cheaper to leave out some of the vital information, FamilySearch volunteers are able to achieve the big numbers Jim showed. Picking out all the names from a free-form record is even more expensive than indexing all the birthplaces from a form.

Does that answer your question?

Signed,
The Ancestry Insider


Dear Ancestry Insider,

I tried to get FamilySearch to correct an error on the 1940 Census. Well I was pretty much informed that even if it was wrong it would stay because 3 people had looked at it. Never mind that is was my aunt and uncle that I had been aware of and knew their names the error is still there.

Signed,
Gale Nash

Dear Gale,

Whoever told you that names could not be corrected in the 1940 census because three people had already looked at them was unauthorized and incorrect (and was, frankly, a little “up in the night”). The real reason is that FamilySearch has no mechanism (like Ancestry.com does) allowing error corrections. FamilySearch has said publicly that they will provide that mechanism someday, but haven’t said whether or not they are currently working on it. One can imagine that preventing their website from pulling a Hindenburg pulled their attention elsewhere.

Signed,
The Ancestry Insider


Dear Ancestry Insider,

I think that FamilySearch should let volunteers pick projects that they are familiar with, such as transcribing foreign countries where they are familiar with surnames. The Croatian church is one example where I am researching. I don't care if 3 people looked at it, they have all butchered the names.

Signed,
Alojzija

Dear Alojzija,

You are absolutely right. People do a terrible job indexing unfamiliar names. In 2010 I wrote “Indexing Errors: Test, Check the Boxes” about “cold indexing.” Frankly, I would expect a 5th generation Utahn of English extraction to butcher Croatian names worse than a highly trained Chinese keyer.

However, FamilySearch does allow volunteers to pick projects. But to be frank, most non-English language speakers aren’t indexing. (If you are one of the few, good on ya, mate.) FamilySearch isn’t going to provide lots of non-English FamilySearch Indexing projects to choose from if they are just going to sit there glacially indexed.

I think the solution is “Laissez Faire Indexing,” as I called it back in 2011. FamilySearch should scan everything in the vault and take everything they are currently photographing and throw it immediately, unindexed, on their website. Then let anyone index anything, anytime. Don’t require any involvement from FamilySearch, or they become the bottleneck. Don’t require them to set up projects or write indexing instructions or block images or anything else. Sure, they can organize formal projects like they do now; but don’t require it. There are downsides, to be sure. See the referenced article for more information.

Signed,
The Ancestry Insider


One reader gave me a friendly jab over a typo in the first article about Jim’s talk: “Jim provided some tips for success. Work with a fried or get some training.”

Dear Insider

I hope we don't all have to work "fried." Winking smile I sincerely appreciate all of your messages -- THANKS for all you do !!!!!

Signed,
Phil Besselievre

Dear Phil,

That was on purpose. It’s state fair time. Everything is served up fried. Winking smile

Signed,
The Ancestry Insider

Thursday, August 25, 2016

Jim Ericson and FamilySearch Indexing (Part 2) – #BYUFHGC

Jim Ericson of FamilySearch addressed the 2016 BYU Conference on Family History and GenealogyThis is the second of two articles about Jim’s presentation.

Jim Ericson of FamilySearch gave a presentation titled “Straight Talk about the State of Indexing” at the 2016 BYU Conference on Family History and Genealogy. His purpose was to “answer several key questions related to FamilySearch indexing and the program’s future in a direct, no nonsense way.”

Where is indexing headed in the future?

FamilySearch is preparing a new indexing system. Jim said the new system is up and running but FamilySearch is still testing and figuring things out. It will probably be after the beginning of 2017 before it is available.

[At this point I have to poke fun at FamilySearch not about you, Jim. FamilySearch has been saying “this year” or “next year” for a long time. Here’s what they’ve said at several dates in the past:

My first career was as a software engineer and my managers were always asking, “How long will it take you to do this thing that no one has ever done before? And I was always thinking, “Are you listening to what you are saying?” I would dutifully try to figure out how long it would take me. Then I would tell my boss twice that long. Without me knowing it, he would double the number before telling the director, who would double it before reporting to the vice president. In the end, the project would take twice that long.

What moving target will I make light of after FamilySearch really release this program? Hmmm. I guess there is always: “We will be done scanning the vault in five years.”]

In the new indexing program FamilySearch will not use double keying. There are a lot of projects that are simple forms and it doesn’t make sense to have 3 people key them. So when it is appropriate, FamilySearch may have single key indexing for an entire record, or for just select fields. A field like gender is probably okay having just one person key the field, while the name should be indexed by two indexers. A qualified volunteer might be able to produce a better index than 3 people.

Another model FamilySearch will use is single-key indexing plus peer review. One person keys the work, but another person reviews it for correctness. This eliminates the problem of arbitrators working in isolation. This is not another name for arbitration. The reviewer doesn’t have to have more competence than the original indexers. It’s like checking a classmate’s homework. It eliminates the adversarial relationship between volunteers.

Coming in the future is the deployment of new technologies.

For things that are typewritten it is really easy for the computer to read those characters. Another technology is something FamilySearch calls robokeying. It reads and interprets text and “indexes” it. It goes beyond OCR. The results are audited. FamilySearch has done extensive testing of the results. There are technologies for recognizing all alphabets.

FamilySearch is testing with Kanji the ability to do handwriting recognition. That is the holy grail of the future.

However, we will always need volunteers, Jim said, not just for indexing, but other tasks like zoning areas of a news page for indexing to work with.

Microtasking is something FamilySearch could employee in the future. There would be specialized tasks like zoning, blocking fields in a form, or recognizing where names are in a record. A microtask could be to identify data types. A microtask could be keying specific fields, like just the name. A microtask could be verifying names. The microtasking system could use a personalized page that directs efforts towards currently needed tasks. This is the direction we are trying to go, he said.

In the future, we are headed towards more difficult projects, Jim said. The biggest factor for indexing volume is currently how easy or interesting the project is. “We’ve done a lot of the easy ones,” he said. The U.S. census only comes once per decade. The Freedmen’s bureau project is an example of a really difficult record type that the future holds. These records are going to be increasingly complex. About 60% of all the really valuable US collections have been completed, and about 40% in the UK. That leaves us with spotty coverage for the rest of the world, so we have huge needs when it comes to indexing in other languages, he said.

Jim took a number of questions.

Q. Will you allow people to be signed in for more than one day at a time?

Yes. That is one of the things we are working on. The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints is very sensitive when it comes to security. The online version will allow two weeks like Family Tree.

Q. When can I do indexing on my smart phone?

“No time soon.” The new online indexing program can be done on a tablet, but requires more real estate than available on a phone. We want to do it. We are evaluating doing it. But it would be irresponsible for me to give a date.

Q. When will the indexing effort be done?

Never. Only about 30% of published records on FamilySearch.org are indexed. And we are still going to be acquiring records. And we have ongoing partnerships with organizations with projects for records we want access to. And new records are created every day. A big problem we have today is getting images imaged before the records are destroyed.

Q. From the time a project is indexed, how long does it take before the collection is published?

The 1940 census was the best we had ever done. Within days we were putting up states. Most projects are more complex and require more auditing and review. A project can get stuck in arbitration, quality assurance, or reindexing. We have some projects that have been hanging at 99% for more than a year. The model is to shorten that time.

Q. Once in a while you find a record that was misindexed, but there is no way to go back and correct it.

The number one question is, by far, “how do I fix a record that has been indexed incorrectly?” One solution we are considering is in the indexing step: preserve both a and b key. The other side is post-publication. That is the holy grail that we want to fix.

Q. Ancestry has had it for years.

Q. I’ve been arbitrating Kentucky marriage records. No one is following the rules. Should I do the job for them or send it back?

If they are done incorrectly, it depends on how diligent you are. If you want to send it back, that would be fine. If they are missing records from part of the image, send it back and indexers can see what they are missing.

Let me finish off with some recent indexing numbers. I received an email recently with this information:

FamilySearch Indexing English records indexed

And the FamilySearch Indexing page has this information as of 13 August 2016:

FamilySearch Indexing Statistics

Wednesday, August 24, 2016

Jim Ericson and FamilySearch Indexing (Part 1) – #BYUFHGC

Jim Ericson of FamilySearch gave a presentation titled “Straight Talk about the State of Indexing” at the 2016 BYU Conference on Family History and Genealogy. His purpose was to “answer several key questions related to FamilySearch indexing and the program’s future in a direct, no nonsense way.” [It’s been so long since the conference, I’m starting to forget things that aren’t in my notes. Hopefully I don’t mess it up too badly. This will be the first of two articles about Jim’s presentation. Here goes…]

To lead off, Jim thanked those who have indexed. There have been 3 billion names indexed in 1.4 billion records through the FamilySearch indexing program. There have been nearly 250,000 indexers so far in 2016. [Since Jim’s presentation, that number has grown to 262,868 according to the FamilySearch Indexing website.]

For the recent world-wide indexing event 116,000 people indexed 10 million records. Participants represented 110 different countries. While some, like Tonga and Samoa had only a few, this is amazing.

FamilySearch's Jim Erickson talks about the world-wide indexing event.

There were 10,000 youth ages 8 to 17 who participated. FamilySearch likes to get youth involved. Youth indexers come and go, Jim said.

FamilySearch's Jim Erickson talks about the world-wide indexing event.

More than 23,000 (19%) participants were not members of The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints. On Facebook there was huge interest by the general public. First time indexers composed 23% of participants. Jim said that is why they do these events. It extends the number of indexers.

Jim told his indexing story. He searched for hours and hours to find the maiden name of William Worley’s wife, Betsy G. He finally found their marriage record and learned it was Gilson.

Jim Erickson spent hours and hours searching for the marriage record of William Worley and Betsy Gilson.

Since then, FamilySearch volunteers have indexed that record and Jim has attached it to Family Tree. “Now people don’t have to go through the process I went through to find Betsy G.,” he said.

Jim said indexing helps us all personally. We learn about family history and learn how to read handwriting. We serve others. We belong to an amazing volunteer community. We improve data entry skills. We increase unity with family and friends and we gain a deeper appreciate for the worth of all men. FamilySearch doesn’t recommend that children start indexing records on their own, but it is a way to collaborate and build family unity, Jim said.

What are the biggest challenges of indexing?

Indexing can be really challenging, especially for beginners. It has an unintuitive software interface. People’s expectation is that you should be able to get started without helps or hints. The handwriting is difficult to read has sometimes has poor legibility. The last few batches often take a long time until researchers buckle down and do the last, hard batches. Instructions vary by project, which is a problem if arbitrators don’t read the instructions and change batches that had been done right. There can be a variety of records, even within the same project.

The software FamilySearch is using can be a challenge. It has had a long, miraculous journey, Jim said. There was a small company called iArchives that was providing software for commercial offshore keying companies. FamilySearch took that software, meant for a trained workforce working on a few projects, and deployed it to a large, diverse workforce. Even though FamilySearch is coming out with web-based indexing, the current software will be used for a long, long time. Some projects have to be offline. But it is now an amazing effort to keep this legacy system running. During the world-wide indexing event an engineer was restarting the server every 10 minutes to prevent it from crashing.

A big challenge of indexing involves human factors. For example, the indexing program used to have a screen showing the percentage of an indexer’s work that was not changed by arbitrators. We’ve removed that because it was causing friction, Jim said. (See “What’s New with Indexing—June 2016” on the FamilySearch blog for more information.) If the indexer has really studied and the arbitrator hasn’t and overrides the correct information, it is really frustrating. You have to remember that indexers and arbitrators are volunteers, Jim said. “We can’t fire them for not doing a good job.” They are doing their best and FamilySearch Indexing is achieving mid-to-high 90th percentile accuracy.

Jim provided some tips for success. Work with a fried or get some training. Focus on a single project at a time for quality and efficiency. Follow the directions. Reach out and help others. Be patient. And stretch yourself into harder projects. “That which we persist in doing becomes easier for us to do—not that the nature of the thing is changed, but that our power to do is increased.” (Attributed to Ralph Waldo Emerson, quoted by Heber J. Grant.)

Tune in next time to learn what is coming in the future and to answers to attendees’ questions.

Tuesday, August 23, 2016

Ancestry Insider in Family Tree Magazine Top 101

The Ancestry Insider is a Family Tree Magazine 101 Best Websites for 2016I recently received this message from Diane Haddad, editor, Family Tree Magazine.

Congratulations! 

Your genealogy website has been named one of our annual 101 best family history websites in the September 2016 issue of Family Tree Magazine. This issue is being mailed to subscribers and is available at ShopFamilyTree.com. It goes on sale August 16 at newsstands. 

Each year, Family Tree Magazine publishes the 101 Best Websites for family history to guide genealogists to the top websites where they can make family history research progress, and to honor the individuals and organizations who create those sites. This year, we took a fresh look at the list, adding more than 30 new, innovative and overlooked sites. For the "old favorites" on the list, we've highlighted new content and features.

The full list of 101 Best Websites for family history, including your site, can also be found using the category links at http://www.familytreemagazine.com/article/101-best-websites-2016 .

Thank you, Diane, David A. Fryxell, and Family Tree Magazine. I am constantly amazed and overwhelmed by the number of quality, awesome websites out there. More are being added everyday. It’s more than I can keep up with. It is an honor to have Diane and David take notice of my small contribution. Their annual list is a great way to keep up with some of the best.

Websites were recognized in one of 16 categories:

101 Best Websites for 2016 main page
2016 Best Big Genealogy Websites
2016 Best Websites for Exploring Your Ancestors' Lives
2016 Best US Genealogy Websites
2016 Best Sites for Sharing Your Genealogy
2016 Best Websites for Putting Ancestors on the Map
2016 Best Genealogy Library Websites
2016 Best Websites for Finding Ancestors in Old Newspapers
2016 Best African-American Genealogy Websites
2016 Best Cemetery and Directory Sites for Genealogy
2016 Best Tech Tools for Genealogy in 2016
2016 Best Immigrant Ancestors Websites
2016 Best British & Irish Genealogy Websites
2016 Best International Genealogy Websites
2016 Best Genetic Genealogy Websites
2016 Best Genealogy News & Help Websites

Monday, August 22, 2016

RootsWeb Update for 20 August 2016

RootsWeb by Ancestry logoHere is the latest I know about the RootsWeb website.

As of 20 August 2016

  • Freepages FTP service seems to be down still.
  • Mailing lists seem to have miscellaneous problems with archives and admin tools.
  • I was able to browse mailing list archives. I understand that was recently broken.
  • The mailing list archive search doesn’t return any emails since sometime in April.
  • I was able to subscribe to a mailing list.
  • I hear reports that emails are being sent, but spam filters are not working, so a lot of the email is spam.
  • User contributed data stats haven’t been updated since 24 February 2016. I don’t know if RootsWeb is currently accepting new data.
  • There are currently 15,297 web pages in the freepages genealogy community index. I haven’t monitored it for change, but there it is.
  • The freepages file manager, http://freepages.rootsweb.ancestry.com/­fileman/, is still missing.

DonFT wrote on 19 August 2016:

I heard from somebody at RW Help whose reply included the words "decisions are being made as to the future availability of this feature." My impression was that the person was referring to the free pages generally. Suggests to me that they may be abandoning the whole thing. Thoughts?

BKip wrote on 18 August 2016:

Having been unable to access the Freepages File Manager since sometime in July I’ve been mostly in the dark about what is going on. My site is fully available for viewing, but I am unable to make any updates. An email to the help desk gave me an ambiguous reply leaving me just as confused. This page is the first place I’ve found where there is at least a bit of information.

Is there another place where there is more information on the status of Freepages?

Is Freepages expected to continue?

Is there a different URL to log-in to the File Manager? http://freepages.rootsweb.ancestry.com/fileman/file_manager.cgi

Any further information would be truly appreciated.

BKip, I’m afraid I have very little information you don’t already have. There is a status page (http://helpdesk.rootsweb.com/ or http://rootsweb.custhelp.com/), but Ancestry.com is not using it.

Tim received this message from RootsWeb on 15 August 2016:

Dear Tim,
Thank you for contacting RootsWeb in regard to Mailing List spam.
We are sorry that you are encountering a problem with spam. We will do all that we can to assist you. The Mailing Lists are undergoing maintenance. Spam filters have temporarily been turned off during this process. Other tools including those for subscribing and unsubscribing are also not available at this time. We expect the spam filters to be re-enabled soon. We apologize for the inconvenience and appreciate your patience.

Bobango2 sent this query to RootsWeb:

Checking in once again on the repairs to the Freepages file manager. RW has over 15000 sites listed in this category. It would be nice to know that they are still working on the issue and have a completion date in mind. It is very frustrating for those of us who have devoted hundreds of hours to these pages not to be able to upload new material or make corrections. Surely, someone in IT can throw light on this matter.

He received this reply on 15 August 2016:

Thank you for contacting RootsWeb in regard to maintenance to the site.
We sincerely apologize for the length of time the maintenance is taking. We had hoped it would be completed by now. Our development team is working on getting this completed as quickly as possible, it is just taking longer than expected. We appreciate your patience and understanding during this time.
If there is anything else with which we might assist you, please let us know

I received this message from the RootsWeb product manager on 15 August 2016:

Right now we are dealing with getting the spam filters working on the mailing lists again. I have nothing new to report other than we are trying to fix problems as we find them.

So, there’s what I know. Post comments as the situation evolves and any of you learn more.

P.S. I got to thinking. How long will Ancestry.com keep the mailing lists running? How much are the mailing lists being used now days? Here’s the historical picture for the number of messages sent during the month of July, since 1995. (Note I skipped some years, as indicated by the dots.) Writing on the wall, guys. Writing on the wall.

Historical graph of the number of RootsWeb mailing list messages during the month of July

Friday, August 19, 2016

Riverton RootsTech Startup Weekend

imageI received this announcement from FamilySearch:

Save the date for start-up weekend on August 25–27, 2016—an awesome 2-day hack-a-thon for developers, entrepreneurs, and designers! Wonder if your app idea has "legs"? Come do a 1-minute informal pitch, and see if you can attract enough interest to build a team. RootsTech is hosting this family history edition of start-up weekend. Projects that relate to family history in some way are encouraged nut need not be family history exclusive. Put ideas into action, and be part of actually building the foundation of a startup—all during this faced-paced 54-hour event. It's also okay to come with no pitch—simply a desire to be a part of this awesome community.

Learn more: http://www.up.co/communities/usa/riverton/startup-weekend/8638

Thursday, August 18, 2016

Crista Cowan and Searching on Ancestry.com – #BYUFHGC

Crista Cowan and Searching on Ancestry.comCrista Cowan presented “Supercharge Your Ancestry Searches” at the 2016 BYU Conference on Family History and Genealogy.

Crista is the corporate genealogist for Ancestry.com. She announced that Ancestry now has more than 17 billion records. Crista said that six to eight years ago she was the indexing manager and had the single largest line item in the budget. Back then they indexed 1 to 2 million records a month. Now, they do that much in a day.

I’ve written before about this presentation. (Crista asks me, “Why do you keep coming?”) To read my articles about previous presentations, see

Here are some additional thoughts that struck me this time around:

Looking first at hints (shaky leaves) to other people’s trees might prejudice you. Look at record hints first.

“In some cases the only thing the archive will provide us is indexes,” Crista said. “Where an image exists, always look at it.” Ancestry indexes enough information to get you to the image. There may be additional information in the image. You can also discover indexing errors. You can see nearby people on the record.

When you are going through a person’s hints, to dismiss a hint you previously had to choose either Yes or No regarding the applicability of that record to that person. But sometimes you don’t know yet. Now you have the choice of selecting Yes, No, or Maybe.

Suggested Records are displayed right of a recordCrista has a love/hate relationship with Suggested Records. Those are the records listed to the right hand side of a historical record. [She said love/hate, but it was clear it was a love/love relationship.] She loves it when there is a bunch of suggested records. She also loves it when there are no suggested records. That happens when she is plowing new ground. 

“Our core search has not changed in years,” she said. What they are doing is adjusting what happens when you search from your tree. Depending on the amount of matching information, and what that information is, they rate and order the results, giving you the best records at the top.

When you launch a search from a person in a tree, smart filtering allows you to eliminate from the search results all the records you have already found and attached to that person. (Look for this setting at the top of the search results.)

Wednesday, August 17, 2016

Gordon Atkinson and Newspapers.com – #BYUFHGC

Gordon Atkinson and Newspapers.com at BYU Conference on Family History and Genealogy Gordon Atkinson gave a presentation titled “Coloring Your Tree With Newspapers.com” at the recent at 2016 BYU Conference on Family History and Genealogy.

Gordon is a senior director at fold3.com and newspapers.com. In 2003 he left ancestry to found Footnote. In October 2010 Ancestry.com acquired footnote and renamed it fold3.

Ancestry has 40 million newspaper pages. But newspapers are indexed through OCR (optical character recognition) and OCR results don’t surface very well on Ancestry.com. So Ancestry took some fold3 technology and created newspapers.com. They launched in 2012 and just four years later have 160 million pages from 4,200 newspapers. They are adding 9 to 10 million pages ever month.

While they are owned and operated by Ancestry.com, their offices were in Lindon, Utah [I assume with Fold3] and Ancestry was in Provo, Utah. They’ve just moved into the new Ancestry office building in Lehi, Utah.

Newspapers.com requires a separate subscription from Ancestry.com, although Ancestry.com offers an all-access bundle. Newspapers.com is successful even outside the field of genealogy.

Because publications from 1922 and before are in the public domain, Newspapers.com can publish them without having to pay royalties. After 1922 they have to enter relationships and pay publishers to republish their newspapers. They just did a deal with Tronc to publish the L.A. Times. Last year they signed an agreement with Ganett to do all 82 of their newspapers. To cover the additional costs of the royalties for these modern newspapers, Newspapers.com has added a “Publishers Extra” premium subscription. The basic subscription gives access to 100 million pages of older newspapers. The Publishers Extra subscription adds access to 71 million more. The + sign next to a title indicates a Publisher Extra subscription is required. However, some titles have issues both before and after 1922. There is a line and different colors indicating the issues requiring the Extra subscription.

When asked about NewspaperARCHIVE, Gordon said that Newspapers.com has similar content, but if Newspapers.com doesn’t yet have more content, they soon will. And he said the Newspapers.com site experience is better.

To get new newspapers, they work with institutions and libraries across the country, but mainly with publishers. He said they take recommendations, but they don’t digitize paper newspapers. All their content is from microfilm and there are plenty of newspapers available on microfilm.

The vast majority of their papers are from the US. Sometimes you’ll see gaps in their coverage. There are lots of reasons for this. The microfilms may have been destroyed or lost. The issues may never have been microfilmed. Sometimes Newspapers.com makes mistakes and they are filed in the wrong place, but usually gaps are because the issues are not available.

Gordon showed the Newspapers.com website. I’ve shown it recently, so I won’t repeat most of it here. See “Ancestry’s Newspapers.com at #NGS2016GEN.” The website uses a technology called HTML 5 instead of the older Flash technology, so it now works on mobile devices.

There is a button to Save to Ancestry. It will let you select a particular tree, and then pick a person. The clip shows up in the Other Sources section of the person page. They are working to make the experience better, passing information over to Ancestry.com, showing a thumbnail, and associating it with events.

If you clip anything, then anyone can view, not just the clip, but a free view of the whole page. We think that some people will be interested and subscribe, although we just want people to have a positive experience, Gordon said.

You can view a collection of clippings that others have done. We have one user who likes to find horrible crimes and clips them, Gordon said. We’ve had a user clip chess matches. Someone called and said, “you have the best website for learning about building supplies in Texas in the 1930s.” She said she needed the information for a master’s thesis. You can search the clipping page. If you click on the clippers name, you see their profile. If the user has allowed it, there is a Contact Me button. From their profile, you can see all the clippings they’ve made. It helps you organize.

Gordon said several things about searching. They are working on improving their search technology. Clippings have a high score and float to the top of search results. You can use quote marks in search, but text must match exactly. You can save a search so that you receive an email when new matches are added. You can filter results to those added in the recent past.

When clipping you can’t join together portions of an article that are not adjacent.

On the title page of a paper, you can click Follow and be informed if they add issues.

There is a free course on Ancestry Academy about Newspaper.com.

Class members gave different opinions as to whether Newspapers.com is available at FamilySearch Family History Centers. I know a limited version is available via the BYU campus Wi-Fi (because I’m using it right now), but the premium papers are hidden here. A FamilySearch help center article indicates that NewspaperARCHIVE is available, but not newspapers.com.

Tuesday, August 16, 2016

Lauren Treasure and Getting Started with DNA – #BYUFHGC

Lauren Treasure, product manager for AncestryDNA at BYU Conference Lauren Treasure, a product manager for AncestryDNA presented “Getting Started with DNA: Steps to Success” at the 2016 BYU Conference on Family History and Genealogy.

“Why take a DNA test?” she asked. To verify a family line. To supplement your existing research. To learn your ethnicity. (They try to show ethnicity from 1000 years back.) To break through a brick wall. To discover a story. To share a picture. And to connect with a cousin. Lauren told us that AncestryDNA currently takes six to eight weeks to post results of a test.

Lauren said we pass down several things from generation to generation. Besides things like names, stories, and heirlooms, we pass some of our DNA. You get exactly 50% from each parent. While the amount you get from each of your grandparents varies, it averages 25%. You don’t inherit the exact same DNA as your siblings. Your results can look different because the set of DNA you inherit is unique to you. That is why siblings’ ethnicity test results look a little different. She illustrated the point with these diagrams:

Ancestry DNA lettered blocks spell names and illustrate inheritance

Ancestry DNA simple chromosome diagram shows DNA inheritance

One of the results AncestryDNA gives you is an ethnicity estimate. To make the estimate they compare your DNA against 3,000 reference individuals from 26 different global regions.

AncestryDNA regions

They are always adding new regions.

She showed photos of some of the people in their reference panel.

Photos of persons in Ancestry DNA regerence panel

She showed a map with dots showing locations of reference panel individuals.

Map showing locations of persons in Ancestry DNA reference panel

A class member asked if you should be retested if you were tested a long time ago. Not unless AncestryDNA sends you a message. If you had your DNA tested on an old chip, then if they add a feature not supported on current chip they will let you know.

The other things AncestryDNA provides to those who take their DNA test is a list of matches to others who have taken the AncestryDNA test. These are sorted by closeness of the relationship. There is no limit to the number of matches. (I have 656.) One method of determining how closely you are related to another person is to measure how much DNA you share. She showed a chart from the ISOGG website showing on average much much DNA is shared by different relatives. Here’s a portion:

% shared Total centiMorgans shared half-identical (or better) Relationship
100% (Method I) 3400.00 Identical twins (monozygotic twins)
50% 3400.00 Parent/child
50% (Method I) 2550.00 Full siblings
25% 1700.00 Grandparent/grandchild, aunt-or-uncle/niece-or-nephew, half-siblings

(To see the complete chart, visit http://isogg.org/wiki/Autosomal_DNA_statistics.)

Another process of determining the relationship is measuring the number of meiosis events. In the chart below, if the number of meiosis events between two test takers and a common ancestor is 1 and 1, then the measurement is M2, which indicates siblings. If there are 5 events + 3 events = 8 events, that is 3rd cousins (M8).

Ancestry DNA meiosis event relationship example

  If you link your DNA to your tree, then AncestryDNA can show common ancestors between you and a DNA match.

Ancestry DNA Shared Ancestor Hint relationship chart

AncestryDNA looks back nine generations for shared ancestors. They call them hints for a reason; the shared ancestors might be someone else. Or one of the trees might be in error. A leaf next to the View Match button indicates there is a shared ancestor hint.

You can contact matches through the Ancestry anonymous messaging systems. AncestryDNA’s Anna Swayne sent a message to a DNA match, learned the story of an ancestor’s trip to America, and got a picture she hadn’t seen before.

Lauren talked about DNA Circles and New Ancestor Discoveries. See my article from last year, “Aaron Orr Talks Ancestry DNA at BYU Conference – #BYUFHGC.” She reminded us that not all DNA circles are on direct lines. There are other reasons you might share DNA. It could be because you match someone in the group, even though you are not descended from the person who is the subject of the circle.

While AncestryDNA tests are available in a wide number of countries (see “AncestryDNA In 29 Additional Countries” on my blog), AncestryDNA hasn’t yet translated all the materials into all the languages.

AncestryDNA has 2.2 million in their database now.

Monday, August 15, 2016

Monday Mailbox: Frankenstein Monsters

The Ancestry Insider's Monday MailboxDear Ancestry Insider,

Just out of curiosity, since this has nothing to do with me—if [FamilySearch Family Tree] is a huge collective project, which it appears it is, and no one can delete a person unless they are the only ones who added the person and no one else has jumped in on it, how do you deal with what I can only imagine will eventually be thousands or tens of thousands of people—duplicates, misascribed children—who should not be there and can't be removed? My ggggrandmother's immediate family all became LDS (except for her), and the amount of well-meaning misinformation on the trees of her parents and siblings means many duplicated children with varying birthdates and children who never existed.I don't even link to most of my LDS relatives earlier trees because of this "noise." So how will they handle this problem?

Signed,
JudyBG

Dear JudyBG,

True duplicates are easy: merge them.

Misascribed children are easy: delete the parent-child relationship. If the actual parents are already in the Tree, attach the child to them.

Misascribed spouses are easy: delete the spousal relationship.

Truly imaginary persons are easy: ask FamilySearch to delete them.

The obvious Frankenstein monsters—combinations of persons already in the Tree—are easy: merge the Frankenstein with one of the source persons, ignoring inapplicable information. (For more information about what I mean by Frankenstein monster, see my article “Frankenstein Genealogy.”)

That’s it for the easy ones. The remaining Frankenstein monsters are the things nightmares are made of.

Just kidding. While difficult, it will be straightforward. Of course you have followed the genealogical proof standard in the instance of your ancestor. You have proved all the facts. You know what your ancestor looked like. FamilySearch suggests creating your ancestor from scratch with the facts you have proved, their associated sources, and their proof statements/summaries/arguments. Mark the two—your ancestor and the monster—as “not a match,” providing a good explanation. If someone tries to merge the two, your explanation is shoved in their face, which will dissuade most people from merging them. I think it wise to throw something in at the beginning of the life sketch as well, since they are displayed at the top of the merge comparisons.

But what is to be done with the monster? I’ve heard someone say that as a good member of the community, you should clean up the monster, that it is particularly important if the monster is left floating without relationships. That’s fine in theory. But one should never make changes in Family Tree without proof, and you probably have not researched the persons composing the monster.

You should not delete the parts of the monster that are in common with your ancestor. While your ancestor may have been the only child born on that date in that village, one of those two facts may apply to a real person trapped inside the monster.

You should not suggest that FamilySearch delete the monster. You may be deleting one or more real persons imbedded in the monster that exist no where else in the tree. In the worst case scenario (I’m good at imagining those), if all other records are no longer available, one of those real persons may be documented no where else.

You shouldn’t delete any of the facts associated with the monster and you shouldn’t delete the monster. That’s the nightmare.

Signed,
---The Scared-of-Monsters Insider

Thursday, August 11, 2016

Gordon Atkinson and Fold3 – #BYUFHGC

Gordon Atkinson presents about Fold3 at the BYU Conference on Family History and Genealogy.At the 2016 BYU Conference on Family History and Genealogy Gordon Atkinson presented “Getting to Know Fold3.”

Fold3.com is owned by Ancestry.com. Gordon started at Ancestry in the early 2000s. He [and others?] left in waves in 2006 and created the company Footnote. It launched in 2007 and went well because of its relationship with the National Archives and Records Administration. In October 2010 Ancestry acquired Footnote. We went back into “the mothership” as we liked to call them. Afterwards Ancestry rebranded them as Fold3. When the flag is folded there are 13 folds. The 3rd fold honors those who have given their all to their country.

In the last year and a half, they changed their logo from a folded flag to a chevron. They are adding non U.S. content and this logo is more universal. Their colors used to be orange and blue. Perhaps it was because Gordon and their designer liked the Denver Broncos.

They just recently moved their offices from Lindon to the new Ancestry building in Lehi. “We moved in with them. That’s a big step in any relationship,” he joked. Gordon thinks It’s a beautiful place and will allow for better collaboration. And it has chocolate milk on tap!

Fold3’s content is harder to organize than Newspapers.com. Newspapers are easily organized by location and date. Military records are a whole other ballgame. They are difficult to index. The content varies from record to record. A record often doesn’t have birth and death information; searching by that information won’t find your ancestor.

Not every military record is available to be on the site. Privacy prevents it for some. There are a lot of records that are only on paper. For example, the War of 1812 pension files are being digitized from paper in a partnership with FGS (the Federation of Genealogical Societies) and FamilySearch. It is much more difficult and much more expensive than scanning microfilm. They have been working on Civil War Widows Pension applications.

Google has spoiled us, Gordon said. We type what we want and Google brings it up. But with Fold3, there may be a record over fifty pages long and they have indexed only names and the state.

They are currently in a project to update their search. They’re changing some of the index fields to make it better. You really can’t solve the search problems; you can only make it better.

You have access to Fold3 at FamilySearch Family History Centers because of an agreement with FamilySearch. It is free at BYU. The institutional version looks similar, but slightly different, from the home version. At home, you need a subscription. You can also buy a bundle with Ancestry.com and Ancestry Academy.

They do not offer an app, but the website is mobile-friendly…-ish, he said.

If you want help, go to the help page. (Fold3.com/tour) It includes a link to a Fold3 class on Ancestry Academy. (The same group in Lindon launched the Ancestry Academy site.) You will need a free account on Ancestry.com to view the free courses, including the one about Fold3.

On the home page you can search right away, or use browse. It is similar to newspapers.com because it shares some of the same code, and there was an attempt to make them similar. When browsing, first select category (mostly wars) and then publication. From there, it depends on the publication. The Revolutionary War Pensions is subdivided by state. A state is divided by surname initial. You can browse in as far as you wish, clear to the individual. At any time while browsing, you can stop and search. The search will include just the records you are browsing into.

They have indexed all the names in a record, rather than just the principal name. Most of their indexing is done overseas. When you consider the indexers are from places like the Philippines, Bangladesh, or China, they do a pretty good job. Fold3 uses grayscale images because they are a little easier to read. When viewing an image, select Annotations to see a list of the secondary names indexed on that image.

The Information tab shows information about the NARA publication, even including a link to the NARA catalog.

In Fold3, when you find something, bookmark it by clicking the star so you don’t have to try to figure out the searching and browsing that brought you to the record.

You can add annotations: names, locations, dates, comments, or transcriptions. These are added to the search index.

The Save to Ancestry button isn’t labeled. It shows only the leaf icon. They are overhauling the process of logging into Ancestry. [I didn’t think it was bad.] You login, select a tree, and then select a person. This is going to improve in the future, with thumbnail and indexed information. Only those with a Fold3 subscription can follow the link and see the record on Fold3.

You can download an entire page or a select a region. They are trying to figure out how to download a multiple page record into a PDF. Today, it must be done one page at a time. You can share it. If you are a paying subscriber, non-subscribers can still see the records you share.

The image viewer uses HTML 5 instead of Flash.

You can zoom in and out and fit to window. You can adjust brightness or contrast or invert the image. You can rotate the document, which is useful for margin annotations found so commonly in historical documents. You can go full screen.

The lines in the filmstrip designate new files.

There is a watch button for search results. For a watched search, Fold3 will send you an email notification for new search matches.

Fold3 has an honor wall. Fold3 has started it with some memorial pages, but you can add your own. (See an example for Charles L Rodeback.) Starting with basic military documents, you can add warmth via stories and photographs.

Wednesday, August 10, 2016

Two Techniques for Healing Broken Links

Two Techniques for Healing Broken LinksLast Friday I presented two citations composed solely of broken URLs and I challenged you to write full citations for them. (See “Darned Image Citations.”) The two can be used to illustrate two different techniques for recovering from broken URLs.

Internet Archive

When you have a URL for a page that no longer exists, sometimes you can find an archived copy of the page. Use the Wayback Machine of the Internet Archive. The Internet Archive has made copies of many freely accessible pages that are not from the “dark web.” Copy a broken URL, go to https://archive.org/, and paste it into the Wayback Machine. Select the desired year and then select the date on the calendar. Sometimes the page is intelligible and sometimes it is not.

The first citation in last week’s challenge consisted of this naked URL: http://www.mocavo.com/1910-United-States-Census/126211/004973415/607. The Mocavo website was deleted when Findmypast bought Mocavo. Mocavo was a free site, so the Wayback Machine might have archived it. But as part of a database, the Wayback Machine almost certainly did not archive it.

In fact, we find the page was archived twice. Neither one displays the image, but they display enough index data that we can search for and locate an image on another website. It is obvious from the URL that the page was from the 1910 U.S. Census. (As an aside, I’ve noticed that early FamilySearch DGS numbers all had nine digits beginning with 004 so the ID in the URL looks suspiciously like a FamilySearch DGS number.) The first three names on the page are

Name

Relation to Head of Household

Gender

Race

Birth Year

Birthplace

Father's Birthplace

Mother's Birthplace

Blanche Black

Daughter

Female

White

1884

Pennsylvania

Pennsylvania

Pennsylvania

Robert Black

Son

Male

White

1892

Pennsylvania

Pennsylvania

Pennsylvania

Mildred Cornelus

Niece

Female

White

1890

Pennsylvania

Pennsylvania

Pennsylvania

With this information, I can do an exact search of the 1910 census on FamilySearch.org for Robert Black, son, born 1892 in Pennsylvania with Blanche Black in the household. This matches only one person (who, by the way, appears on an image in digital folder number 004973415):

     1. 1910 U.S. census, Huntingdon County, Pennsylvania, population schedule, Huntingdon Borough, 2nd ward, enumeration district 67, sheet 6-A, family [124], line 2, Robert [Black]; digital image, FamilySearch (https://familysearch.org/ark:/61903/3:1:33S7-9RVF-13K : 11 November 2015), Pennsylvania > Huntingdon > Huntingdon Ward 2 > ED 67 > image 11 of 34.

Some notes:

  • I don’t often cite line number, but this is one of those odd ducks where the family is divided across two pages. This child appears near the top of the page and is not identified by family name. Citing the line number removes ambiguity.
  • I didn’t include the NARA publication number and roll number. I’m feeling that no one will use my citation to go look at microfilm. If they want to, there are multiple ways to determine roll number. As microfilm census access evaporates, microfilm information becomes unnecessary and census citations will evolve accordingly.
  • I didn’t include the FamilySearch collection name. I figure most people can find the 1910 U.S. census on FamilySearch.org without knowing the exact name. Besides, the URL will take them directly to the image within the collection.
  • I cited the URL of the image because it has “ark:” in it. That means FamilySearch intends to keep that URL from breaking.
  • I cited the publication date rather than the access date. As a general rule, cite publication date when available and access date when not.

 

URL Poking

When a URL breaks, sometimes looking at the URL gives useful information. One URL convention specifies the main address of a page before a question mark, followed by options separated by the ampersand (&) character.

The second URL in last week’s challenge was a broken URL from Ancestry.com: http://www.ancestry.com/search/io/browse.asp?c=8 & state=Vermont & county=Addison & township=Bristol & ed= & roll=M33_126 & STAbrv=VT & startimg=30 & endimg=42 & rp=42 & hash=1670352374 & width=2877 & height=5089 & levels=5 & colorspace=Grayscale

We see among the options, these values:

  • state=Vermont
  • county=Addison
  • township=Bristol
  • ed=
  • roll=M33_126
  • STAbrv=VT
  • startimg=30
  • endimg=42
  • rp=42

Census microfilm junkies will recognize M33 as a NARA microfilm publication number. Google indicates that [nara microfilm publication m33] is the 1820 U.S. Federal census. The challenge was to cite Pearis Raymond. I can do an exact search of the 1820 census on Ancestry.com for Pearis Raymond living in Bristol, Addison, Vermont. This matches only one person:

     2. 1820 U.S. census, Addison County, Vermont, population schedule, Bristol, page 69-B, 3rd name from bottom, Pearis Raymond; digital image, Ancestry (http://search.ancestry.com/search/db.aspx?dbid=7734 : updated 31 May 2013), Vermont > Addison > Bristol > image 9 of 9.

Notes:

  • For the same reasons as the FamilySearch.org citation, I left off the microfilm information and exact database title.
  • I went out on a limb and cited the URL of the database rather than the home page. Ancestry has never made any public commitment to make any of their URLs persistent. If it works, it’s an added convenience. If it doesn’t, most people can still get to Ancestry.com.
  • I questioned whether to specify an access date or a publication date since most people don’t know how to find publication dates of Ancestry’s databases. (Look up the database in the catalog and hover over the title.) In the end I figured the publication (update) date was still more useful than an access date.

The final challenge was to adapt what was essentially a microfilm citation to reference Lewis Rapp on FamilySearch.org. There was a wrinkle. FamilySearch uses a bad index of that page that they obtained from Fold3. Fold3 had the illegible image, so Lewis Rapp was indexed as “[illegible Rapp].” Good image; bad index. Until just a few weeks ago, Ancestry had the opposite: bad image, good index. Now they have the superior offering.

     3.  1860 U.S. census, Jackson County, Ohio, population schedule, Scioto Township, p. 62, family 426, Lewis Rapp; NARA microfilm publication M634, roll 992; digital image, FamilySearch (https://familysearch.org/ark:/61903/3:1:33SQ-GBSD-9PGS : 8 April 2016), Ohio > Jackson > Scioto Township > image 27 of 38.

Of course, these are not the only acceptable citations. I’ve noted some of my judgement calls; you may have made different ones. Just keep in mind: Citations communicate concisely, with clarity and consistency.