Beware the Ides of March 2016 News Ketchup

“Friends, Romans, countrymen, lend me your ears.”

Ancestry.com forecasted that RootsWeb would be back online about 15 March 2106 (today). I prognosticated it would take longer. Looks like I was mostly wrong as most of RootsWeb is back online. Since I write these articles on the weekend, I can’t give you the current status, but here’s what it was last Saturday:

• http://www.rootsweb.ancestry.com/ – Home page is up, including the message about the hardware failure.
• http://wc.rootsweb.ancestry.com/ – World Connect is up.
• http://helpdesk.rootsweb.com/FAQ/wcindex.html – Helpdesk pages are up.
• http://searches.rootsweb.ancestry.com/ – Most searches are up.
• http://bigfile.rootsweb.ancestry.com/cgi-bin/search – Search thingy is down.
• http://lists.rootsweb.ancestry.com/ – Mailing list website is down.
• Mailing list emails are ?? Anybody subscribed to a RootsWeb email list?
• http://boards.rootsweb.com/ – Message boards are up, but I don't think they use the RootsWeb servers so they probably never went down.
• http://freepages.genealogy.rootsweb.ancestry.com/ – Freepages hosted websites are down. It has been long enough that Google has flushed these pages from its cache. You cannot use Google to find the URL of your websites in order to download them off the Internet Archive’s Wayback Machine. However, Bing.com and Yahoo.com had not yet flushed their caches (as of Saturday). As a contingency plan in case Ancestry is not able to resurrect them, if you have a Freepages website and don’t already have a backup, I encourage you to use Bing or Yahoo quickly to get the URL for your website. You can then access it via the Internet Archives.
• http://www.rootsweb.ancestry.com/~websites/ – Home pages hosted websites are up.

Since Ancestry isn’t using the established RootsWeb status page (mirrored here), to check availability you must select each URL individually.

Ancestry DNA is on sale for $89 (a 10% savings), plus shipping and tax. The sale lasts through 17 March 2016. Visit http://dna.ancestry.com for more information.

According to the US National Archives and Records Administration: “OUR COLLEAGUES AT FAMILYSEARCH.ORG HAVE RECENTLY FINISHED DIGITIZING AND putting online a new original series that will be of interest to genealogists and historians alike—the Massachusetts, Salem, and Beverly Crew Lists and Shipping Articles. This is the first time these records have been captured on microfilm or digitally. The series consists of three original collections from the National Archives at Boston:

• Crew lists and returns of seamen for the Port of Salem and Beverly, compiled 1797–1818. National Archives Identifier 1600758
• Shipping articles for the Port of Salem and Beverly, 1810–1899. National Archives Identifier 1600870
• Crew lists for the Port of Salem and Beverly, 1787–1934. National Archives Identifier 1600759”

FamilySearch combined these three collections as “Massachusetts, Salem and Beverly Crew Lists and Shipping Articles, 1797-1934.” Salem and Beverly were a large port in the early history of the country, so if you have New England roots, you might have relatives in the collection.

FamilySearch is updating the FamilySearch Research Wiki this week. To avoid losing any contribution made during the update, editing is not this week. If you wish to contribute to the wiki—which I hope you do regularly—please come back after 9:00am, 21 March 2016. Concerning the update, FamilySearch has said:

• “All information will be kept and put in the new upgraded version of the wiki.
• Navigation will change from the right side of the screen to the left.
• Country and State pages will be redesigned for better use.  This redesign will occur as close to the time of the new release as possible, but may not be completed when the upgrade takes place.
• The URL for the Wiki on the FamilySearch.org website will be changed for better usability
• The Rich Text editor will be replaced with Visual Editor.
• The upgraded version of the Wiki will be editable in all browsers including Chrome.”

FamilySearch is hoping to add a feature to Family Tree called Family Projects that will allow users to share living persons in the tree. This allows sharing of documents, pictures, and stories and makes it so families don’t have to reenter each other into Family Tree over and over. Currently, living persons are not shared as is most of the tree. Ron Tanner explains it in a short blurb (1:32) on YouTube.

The National Genealogical Society has announced that it will live stream ten lectures from its 2016 Family History Conference, which will be held 4-7 May 2016, in Fort Lauderdale, Florida. “Details of the live streaming program can be found on the NGS Conference website. NGS members and others across the United States and overseas, who are unable to attend the conference in person, are invited to sign up for these live streaming broadcasts.”

People can sign up for either or both of two tracks of five lectures. Lectures can be viewed for three months after the conference. I know some attendees at last year’s conference bought the streaming lectures for viewing after the conference. The broadcasted lecturers are among the best, so their classes fill quickly onsite. If you can view them after the conference, that frees you up to attend other conference sessions.

One other thing: Remember that the conference discounted Early Bird registration will close on 31 March 2016.

As Kendall Hulet indicated at RootsTech that it was coming, Ancestry has released a feature allowing users to choose a color scheme other than the much maligned funeral colors first released with New Ancestry. For more information, see “Ancestry Product Update: Tree Color Preferences” on the Ancestry Blog.

Ancestry recently posted their monthly “What’s New at Ancestry” video, March 2016 edition, on YouTube. Crista Cowan talks about conferences Ancestry will be attending this spring and summer, new site changes, product announcements, and new record collections released last month (28 million records). New product features include Continue Searching and LifeStory and Facts View tutorials. New product announcement concerns the availability of Ancestry DNA in 29 additional countries, new course offerings in Ancestry Academy. and desktop support for Family Tree Maker and RootsMagic. Some of the new collections mentioned are

• “U.S., Definitive List of Slaves and Property, 1827-1828”
• “Alberta, Canada Homestead Records, 1870-1930”
• “California, Mortuary Records of Chinese Decedents”
• “Sydney, Australia Cemetery Headstones, 1867-2002”
• Two United Methodist Church collections
• Ireland, Catholic Parish Registers, 1655-1915”
• “U.S., Selected States Dutch Reformed Church Membership Records, 1701-1995”

That clears out much of my inbox. I hope it made sense, because “it was Greek to me.”

#NGS2014GEN English Research and the FamilySearch Wiki

Nathan Murphy of FamilySearch presented a session titled “FamilySearch Wiki Guide to English Research” at the 2014 annual conference of the National Genealogical Society. Murphy is a senior research consultant at the Family History Library.

Murphy started by asking everyone to silence their cells phones while giving him leave to leave his on. You see, his wife is just about to have a baby and he didn’t want to miss a call from the hospital. Needless to say, he planned to be on a plane the minute the session was over.

In the past, the Family History Library published a series of research guides. With the Internet, websites were being added more quickly than the guides could be updated. Consequently, FamilySearch established a wiki that could be updated by both FamilySearch staff and researchers at large. That’s where the information from the guides migrated. Over 75,000 articles are now present in the Wiki. The wiki and its use is growing. In the next month or two we expect to get a million plus visitors each month.

The wiki contains resource information that can be used in conjunction with the FamilySearch catalog. For example, the catalog entries for Somerset County list no online resources. However, if you go to the Wiki article, the article contains many links to online records. The links include both free and paid resources. You need to be aware of all the resources available and articles in the wiki include parishes that aren’t available in the records from the International Genealogical Index (IGI).

In the Wiki search for articles by location or by topic. For example, from the article about England, you can link into related topical articles, or you can link to counties within England. From county pages you can link to topical articles, but you can also link to parishes within the county.

If you went to the England page, this is what you would see:

You have links to record types in the left column. And further down the page you have links to each county.

If you go to http://maps.familysearch.org you can see the parish boundaries for all the jurisdictions in 1851 England. Much of the jurisdictional information from that project is now available in the wiki.

At the bottom of each parish page is what is called a nav-box. It has links to all county-related record types, parishes, probate courts, and county archives.

Beneath the article title on a parish page is a bread crumb trail that shows you the hierarchical path going back up to England. Beneath that is a table of contents for the page.

If you click on the history tab you can see a list of edits and the editors. Click on the username and you can see a page about the author. This can help you judge the quality of the information in each article.

Besides browsing or search in the Wiki, Google can be used to find the parish pages in the Wiki.

An example showing parish register information online is Chediston, Suffolk. FindMyPast and FamilySearch are both publishing its records online.

Another example is Burnham Westgate, Norfolk. “We don’t always know exactly what we have online, so I had to put “undefined.” In some instances you can find an index on FreeReg and the images on FamilySearch.org. Where multiple indexes exist, if you can’t find your ancestors on one website, you may be able to find it on another.

London Church Records shows online, published, and microfilm records for marriage licenses. The marriage licenses contain more information than present on the church registers.

One strategy to find missing baptism entries is called radius search. In Wing, Rutland under Maps and Gazetteers you can click through to the England Jurisdictions 1851 map site. There you can specify a radius search and see a list of all the parishes within that distance. You can then use online indexes for a quick search. Then you’ll need to recheck the microfilm, since indexing errors can exist.

It can be difficult finding wills and probate records in England. Depending on where you lived, you’ll go to a different court to find the will. In Kent, you could go to a dozen different places. (Blue text is a hyperlink. Red text is a hyperlink to an article that hasn’t been written yet.) We have most of the English wills on microfilm at the FHL.

Published abstracts of wills that index all names are rare. “England Everyname Probate Indexes” gives some examples, some of which have been published online. Every name indexes are useful. For example, you can find a daughter’s father’s name.

English census records have been published up through 1911. They have all been published online.

Chancery court records deal with things like family disagreements, divorces, and so forth. Ronald Hill has allowed us to publish an article he wrote about finding them.

We’ve also tried to show which of the old Heraldic Visitations pedigrees have been published online. Go to the county page and look for the Heraldic Visitations link.

Another valuable source is called lay subsidies. These are tax lists and go back to the 1200’s. FamilySearch went in and microfilmed thousands of these, but no one knew we had them. We have originals from 1272 to 1678 of hearth tax records. Because it covers the whole country, it was cataloged under England Taxation records. The catalog can help you find what has been covered. The E 179 catalog entry on the National Archives website gives some information. These can give you an idea of who was living at the time previous to coverage by parish registers.

One of the curious things about these online parish records [I didn’t note what parish or website he was showing] or other records is that there is no online information about coverage of databases. In some of these cases we have better coverage information than the websites where the databases are located.

Murphy finished his presentation without cell phone interruption. Go home, Nathan. Your wife needs you.

#FGS2013 - Breaking Out of the Dog Pile!

I attended the full set of FamilySearch sponsored lectures during Society Day at the 2013 annual conference of the Federation of Genealogical Societies. This was one of them:

Devin Ashby presented the session, “Breaking Out of the Dog Pile! Energizing Your Society through Projects and Causes.” Ashby is a community advocate for FamilySearch.

“Much of the work in genealogy is happening now in groups,” said Ashby. “Through technology, groups are able to communicate, train each other, and publish records. Internet indexing and other resources can assist in these areas while increasing visibility.”

Ashby walked through the FamilySearch.org website, showing the design put in place in April. I’ve covered much of it already so I won’t repeat any here.

Societies need more visibility. He walked through some ways of making your society more visible. Webinars can draw a lot of interest. Social media can give visibility. Ashby showed the California Genealogical Society and Library’s Pinterest board and the National Genealogical Society’s YouTube channel. These can generate an amazing amount of visibility. Ashby’s own Google Genealogist YouTube presentation has over 23,000 views.

Societies need more unity. He gave examples of FamilySearch indexing partnerships that have unified societies and told us about three initiatives FamilySearch is pushing: FamilySearch.org/immigration, familysearch.org/italian-ancestors, and Hispanic records.

He said that helping author the FamilySearch Wiki can unify societies.

He said that societies can partner with RootsTech to hold local family history fairs. (I talk about that in another article.)

Societies need to publish more. He talked about all the publishing that FamilySearch is doing. He showed a slide showing that FamilySearch is considering new record types for different market segments. (Click on the image to the right to enlarge it. Sorry about the blur; blame my tremors.)

He showed a slide listing these types:

• Photos with strong metadata
• Obituary collections
• Yearbooks
• Newspapers
• Paper compiled genealogies (not in book form)

If your society has an obituary collection, talk to FamilySearch about indexing it. FamilySearch is moving into obituaries and newspapers. OCR isn’t sufficient to make these highly accessible; they need to be indexed.

Earlier this year FamilySearch indexed their first photo collection. Pioneers and Prominent Men of Utah was indexed in eight hours, processed the next day, and published in a couple of weeks.

Beyond the Walls of Your FHC

“We should not confine ourselves to the brick and mortar walls of our family history center,” said Art Johnson in his session at the 2011 BYU Family History Conference. Family history center staff members and family history consults should reach out to enrich the world. Johnson manages FamilySearch support. (That’s 1-866-406-1830 and support@familysearch.org, if you were wondering.)

FamilySearch is doing their part to reach out.

“The idea is to provide to the community help where they want it,” said Johnson. With so many people on Facebook and other social websites, it is natural to have a presence on each.

Facebook

 

FamilySearch is reaching out on Facebook where they’ve currently established research communities for nine states

• West Virginia Genealogy Research Community,
• North Carolina Genealogy Research Community,
• Missouri Genealogy Research Community,
• Texas Genealogy Research Community,
• Tennessee Genealogy Research Community,
• Ohio Genealogy Research Community,
• Virginia Genealogy Research Community,
• South Carolina Genealogy Research Community,
• New York Genealogy Research Community,

and 6 countries

• Finland Genealogy Research Community,
• Ireland Genealogy Research Community,
• Denmark Genealogy Research Community,
• Wales Genealogy Research Community,
• England Genealogy Research Community, and
• Sweden Genealogy Research Community.

Research community pages join existing Facebook pages:

• FamilySearch,
• FamilySearch Indexing (also in Spanish and French),
• FamilySearch Wiki, and
• Family History Library.

While FamilySearch is creating Facebook pages, family history centers (FHCs) are encouraged to create pages in the FamilySearch Wiki rather than establishing their own Facebook presence.

Skype

FamilySearch is also reaching out on Skype, where they’ve created a number of Skype chats for genealogical research.

Johnson said that FamilySearch doesn’t make it a policy to run the communities, but to enable their existence.

I’m not familiar with Skype but it appears there is no way to search for group chats. Apparently, you must contact a creator or host who adds you to the group. Instructions on joining one of the FamilySearch Skype chats are found in the FamilySearch Wiki article, “Join a Skype Research Community.”

Twitter

FamilySearch is also reaching out via Twitter, where it posts news items using the username @FS_News.

YouTube

FamilySearch recently announced a newly redeveloped YouTube channel.

And You

Staff members at smaller family history centers often find themselves with no patrons to help. Johnson encouraged family history consults to reach out and help via these social networking websites as well as FamilySearch’s own Forums and Wiki.

There is a mistaken idea that we as centers, as consultants, are not supposed to interact with societies. Not true! We have different purposes but we can help one another.

“Take an opportunity to turn your work inside out,” said Johnson. “Become more extraverted in helping others.”

FamilySearch.org SSDI Citation Review

I’ve been writing about the Social Security Death Index (SSDI) for the past several weeks:

• In “How Reliable is the SSDI” I wrote a bit about aspects of the SSDI that affect its evidentiary value.
• I compared SSDI implementations in “SSDI: Ancestry.com vs. FamilySearch.org.”
• Prerequisite to reviewing their SSDI citations, I presented “Citation Principles for Genealogy Record Publishers.”
• Last time, I did an “Ancestry.com SSDI Citation Review.”
• Today, I wrap up the series in “FamilySearch.org SSDI Citation Review.” I should disclose that I must share responsible for FamilySearch’s poor citations. Despite this conflict of interest, I feel I owe you, my readers, my best attempt at criticism without prejudice.

And I should warn you that I digress into a tirade against FamilySearch because of 40 years of pent up frustrations. I apologize to current decision makers who I think “get it.”

Suggested Citations

I expect more from a professional genealogist than from a hobbyist. In this review I’m going to nitpick details that you don’t need to worry about. Ancestry.com and FamilySearch have a responsibility to create your citations. That’s a major reason why I am not pulling any punches.

FamilySearch should provide citations to its SSDI collection and to individual records. I think they should look (similar to those I proposed for Ancestry.com) like this:

How to Cite This Record (full reference note):
     1.  “U.S. Social Security Death Index,” database, FamilySearch (http://www.FamilySearch.org : accessed 12 July 2011), entry for Donald N. Sider, 322-26-3895; derived from U.S. Social Security Administration, Death Master File, database (Alexandria, Virginia: National Technical Information Service, 30 June 2011).

How to Cite This Record (shortened reference note):
     2.  “U.S. Social Security Death Index,” FamilySearch, entry for Donald N. Sider, 322-26-3895.

How to Cite This Collection (Bibliography):
“U.S. Social Security Death Index.” Database. FamilySearch. http://www.FamilySearch.org : 2011. Derived from U.S. Social Security Administration. Death Master File. Database. Alexandria, Virginia: National Technical Information Service, 24 July 2011.

You Too Can Fix FamilySearch’s Citations

As I write this, FamilySearch supplies this citation on the SSDI collection page:

 
Collection citation from the SSDI collection page

As I understand it, the citation is automatically copied from the wiki for display on the collection page.

 
Collection citation from the wiki page

If you don’t like it, you can “fix it” in the collection’s wiki article, “United States Social Security Death Index (FamilySearch Historical Records).” I need to write an article or two explaining how that works and how one goes about fixing something in the Wiki. It’s a bit like being the first bird in a flock to react to a predator. If you are going to fix it, you better do it fast. There is talk of pulling the citation from some internal place. But I digress…

Bibliography/Source List

This citation has numerous problems that you could fix.

1. Identification. If this citation is not of the source of the collection, why title it “Sources of Information for This Collection?” FamilySearch should identify these citations as how to cite the entire collection.
2. Bibliography punctuation. Elements in a bibliography (source list) citation are separated by periods. (It’s as if the citation is a paragraph and each element is a sentence.) Elements in reference notes are separated by commas (as if the citation is a sentence).
3. Source of the source. FamilySearch failed to provide an adequate source-of-the-source citation. This is especially sad, given the title.
4. Repository. No repository need be given for publications. For printed publications, the only time I would specify the repository is if the publication wasn’t listed in WorldCat.org. That’s the only time. Uh… I guess the other only time would be if I were quoting an annotation someone had written into a particular published book. (Penciled corrections and additions to family histories used to be an acceptable practice.)

Listing the Family History Library as a repository is not only unnecessary, it is untrue.

The Internet is a publishing mechanism. FamilySearch’s record collections are published works. The information comes to your computer screen from a farm of computer servers which can be anywhere on the planet.

Where is the repository serving up FamilySearch’s record collections? Jay Verkler once told me and a bunch of other bloggers not to tell you that they were thinking of establishing a second vault someplace. It was not to be the kind that you hollow out of a mountain, but an electronic one. It would give FamilySearch a second, redundant location for the FamilySearch.org website. Oops. Did I say that out loud.

Well as long as I’m in trouble…

There are newspaper accounts of a server farm in the Granite Mountain Record Vault, but I don’t recall if Verkler said it is the home of the FamilySearch.org website. There are accounts on FHCNET that FamilySearch has a server farm in Virginia, but I don’t recall Verkler mentioning it. There was a RootsTech session stating that parts of the FamilySearch.org lives in “the cloud.”

The point I’m leading up to is that while I don’t know where it is—the repository that houses FamilySearch.org’s Social Security Death Index—I know it isn’t the Family History Library.

One good thing I want to point out is FamilySearch’s use of the term “from” to set off the source-of-the-source citation. I like the little prepositions that Chicago Manual of Style uses to connect parts of a citation.¹

Reference Note

Record citations from the wiki page

FamilySearch does not provide citations to its records. This is critical. Hobbyists rarely use any other citation type. Citations can be extremely easy for users if the vendor would make it so. Instead, FamilySearch provides an example with a sloppy typo (the lack of a space after a period and before an uncapitalized “entry.”

I’ve used FamilySearch products from way before they were called FamilySearch and their inattention to sources is epoch.

• Microfilm: Unique citations not consistently captured.
• Family group sheets (early): no space for citations.
• Four generation program: miniscule space for optional citations.
• Individual and marriage entry forms: citations discarded (not keyed).
• PVRL: discarded.
• PAF (early): no citation support.
• GEDCOM: lossy citation exchange.
• FHLC: incorrect citations for hierarchical archives.
• Ancestral File: citations discarded from patron submissions.
• TempleReady: sources made optional and discarded if present.
• Pedigree Resource File: citations discarded before online publication.
• new FamilySearch Tree (NFS): no source management.
• NFS (early): sources specified nothing besides the date the information was loaded.
• NFS (early): citation entry takes longer than login timeout.
• NFS: sources optional, although the tree is intended for collaboration.
• NFS: can’t exchange sources with desktop tree managers.
• NFS: IGI source information (meager as it is) discarded.
• NFS: for members of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints, no sources are given for ordinances (even though NFS replaces the IGI as the official repository of this information).
• FamilySearch.org: record collections are published without source coverage.
• FamilySearch.org: records don’t have citations.
• FamilySearch.org: printouts don’t have citations.
• FamilySearch.org: images don’t have citations.
• FamilySearch.org: copy to clipboard doesn’t include citations.

Decade after decade, product after product, new decision makers arrive at FamilySearch, treat sources as an afterthought, sometimes making irreversible blunders. About the time they finally get that genealogy is harder than it looks and that sources are genealogy, they move on. It’s genealogical maturity. It’s the chasm. It’s frustrating beyond belief.

But I digress…

Scorecard

Requirement	Meets Requirement?
Citations meet professional standards	Almost. A for effort.
Provides citations for published collections	Yes, but mistitled as “Source Information” and “Sources of Information for This Collection.”
Provides citations for individual records	No.
Citations to published collections distinguished from citations to collection sources	Yes.
Citations indicate source-of-the source	No.
Record citations contain information necessary to locate the cited records	No record citations are provided, but the suggested example contains the necessary information and more. I wouldn’t bother including birth date.
Record citations contain information necessary to locate archive originals	Again, no record citations are provided, but the example contains the necessary information, the social security number.
Reference notes and Source list entries are labeled accordingly	No.

The final score for FamilySearch is 2 yeses, 5 nos, and 1 tirade.

UPDATE: Since seeing my article, FamilySearch has substantially improved the citations in the Wiki. They’ve asked that I reiterate that everyone is invited to contribute to the FamilySearch Wiki.

---

Sources

     1.  The Chicago Manual of Style 15th ed. (Chicago: The University of Chicago Press, 2003; CD-ROM version 1.2.3), 662 (“in”), 666 (“by”), 667 (“of”).

Jay Verkler, FamilySearch, and the Community

Jay Verkler addresses 2010 NGS Conference
© 2010 IR1. All rights reserved.

I had a chance to grab a minute with Jay Verkler at the close of the 2011 National Genealogical Society (NGS) annual conference. Verkler is president and CEO of FamilySearch.

“We’re very excited to see how the genealogical category is moving forward,” he said. “To FamilySearch, the growth of the category has always been very important, which is why we support societies, archives, and other commercial companies. We don’t think about them as competitors; we think about them as partners trying to build the community.”

Verkler said this year is turning out to be a great one. He saw a lot of positive indicators at NGS,  spoke with representatives from several societies, including NEHGS, and was pleased to hear many are on growth paths.

Verkler is glad that Ancestry.com is doing well. “Ancestry’s growth has just been fantastic. It’s been exciting.” Their success as a public company attracts more investors to the category who then put money into other genealogy companies. Verkler said we’re going to see other companies in the space, like BrightSolid in Europe, MyHeritage with its worldwide penetration, Archives.com, and “some other companies that you can’t see yet that are coming your way soon, that are all gaining financial funding.”

“For us, it’s exciting to see that,” said Verkler. “All of these things make 2011 and 2012 look like great growth years.”

Monday Mailbox: Printed Research Guides

Dear Ancestry Insider,

The state and country research guides have been moved to the FamilySearch wiki. That's a good way to keep them up to date. Unfortunately they've created no way to easily print them. That's a really ill-conceived development. A lot of people like to have printed guides that they can look at when their computers are turned off.

From Anonymous*

Dear Out of Print,

I thought a bit about your comment last night. For us who live all day in the computer, it is too easy to dismiss your concern. You know our type. If we don’t have at least two gadgets on our selves at all time, we start to fidget and wring our hands.

I remember experiencing your same feelings. I went to college between punch cards and personal computers. All we programmers printed our programs when we left the computer lab early each morning. We poured over those printouts for the hours we were out of the lab. We wrote new code in pencil in the margins and marked up the lines of arcane symbols, only to return to the lab that night, enter the changes and repeat the cycle.

Once I graduated to full-time employment my program printouts exploded in size from a dozen pages to hundreds of pages. I quickly found myself alone by the printer, watching the group’s entire paper budget emerge from the machine. It took quite some time to adjust to the small window my computer screen afforded into a document I previously viewed unfettered.

Unfortunately—well, actually fortunately, man’s accumulation of knowledge is like a gas, expanding to fill the space allotted it. The 40 page research guide of the 90s has now expanded, probably ten times or more. Guides previously restrained to country or state coverage now extend to counties, provinces, and municipalities. Printing out all the pages corresponding to an old paper guide is not only super inconvenient—as you may have found—it is completely impractical.

I have no easy answer for you. If a compelling number of people were willing to pay $20 or $30 bucks for a printed guide of hundreds of pages, a FamilySearch affiliate might try to fill the vacuum.

Short of that, I think you’re going to be stuck with printing your own. You will have to reset your expectations, settling for a much less desirable solution than afforded in the past. Don’t even think about printing all the pages replacing a hardcopy guide. Be choosy. Print only the articles that you need offline, short term.

That’s all I’ve got. Does anyone else have suggestions?

Signed,

The Ancestry Insider

Comparing the Old and the New

Saturday morning another uncertain indication showed up that beta.familysearch.org will go live this month. This comment showed up temporarily on the FamilySearch Wiki early Saturday morning:

The FamilySearch Wiki Engineering Team modified a link on this page so it will not break when the Family History Library Catalog changes in late December.

The comment and the modification disappeared before the end of the day.

Documentation on beta.familysearch.org goes through the features of the old FamilySearch.org and gives a report card, of sorts, noting differences or deficiencies with the new FamilySearch.org website. I’ve added my own candid take, below.

To you, my friends outside FamilySearch, remember that these are my personal opinions and I do not speak for FamilySearch.

To you, my friends inside FamilySearch, I mean no offense. I know you care for quality, are aware of the issues, and are working to fix them. I have faith in you and ever growing respect. Although you may hear some things here first, I only repeat publicly available information.  My criticisms are offered as a service to our users.

Feature from old FamilySearch.org	Status of the feature on the new beta.FamilySearch.org
	The logo works as it did before, taking you back to the home page. The new website does not have a home button. I hear users saying they want it; I’m surprised FamilySearch hasn’t complied.
	Search Records, Advanced Search, and RecordSearch pilot have all been replaced with Historical Records search. Surprising, there are no links to this central feature of the new FamilySearch.org website. None in the header. None in the footer. Here’s an insider tip: Click the FamilySearch logo.
	I wrote about the FHLC after the November release (here and here). Product Manager, Robert Kehrer, responded with additional information you’ll want to read. (Thanks, Robert!)
	The new FamilySearch.org website provides no way to search Historical Books and no link to search them on the BYU website. There are links to individual titles in the Family History Library Catalog. The documentation states, “You cannot currently search the historical books directly.” I hope that means FamilySearch is planning on adding Historical Book search.
	Google and other search engines do a far better job of searching other websites. Further, it is beyond FamilySearch’s ability to maintain a categorized directory of genealogy websites. With the FamilySearch Wiki, FamilySearch has given users the ability to provide, categorize, and maintain links to other websites.
	The new website’s Ancestral File has Individual view only. Pedigree and family views are coming. Thankfully FamilySearch has concentrated on higher quality historical records and readying the new FamilySearch Tree for public use. Hopefully this meager effort to include Ancestral File is but a placeholder for the latter.
	The 1880 U.S. Census is present on the new website, along with additional years! Some minor losses of functionality have occurred, including links to subscription websites, where the images were free for some FamilySearch accounts. (BTW, the image links on the old website no longer work. But I digress…) The 1881 British Census is not available on the new website. Use the old one. The 1881 Canadian Census is present, along with additional years!
	As I’ve mentioned before, the good stuff—the extraction records—have been moved into FamilySearch Historical Records, available on the new website now. Patron submissions were moved to the new FamilySearch Tree. I’ll have a lot more to say about the IGI.
	Not added yet. Users are instructed to use the old website. Ditto here my comments about Ancestral File.
	The US Social Security Death Index was added to FamilySearch Historical Records last week!
	The Vital Records Index is present, but incomplete. I tried one record from each of the five countries. Twenty percent of my teeny, tiny unscientific sample were missing. Has FamilySearch compared batch counts to know how many records are missing? *  Mexico: Albino Perez *  Denmark: Lars Peter Johansen, 19 Oct. 1877; Sigersted, Sorø, D. -  Finland: Matt Johansson, 12 Sep 1867; Sippola, Viipuri, Finland *  Norway: Ellen Johannesdatter; Askim, Ostfold, Norway *  Sweden: Nils Johansson, 5 July 1801;Stånga, Gotland, Sweden
	I don’t get it. If Historical Records are the central feature of the new FamilySearch.org website, then FamilySearch Indexing is its lifeblood. The FamilySearch Indexing page is buried two links under the home page. The first link is secret. The second is hidden. Should you solve the mystery of the first, secret link, don’t bother clicking the big “FamilySearch Indexing” title or the large, beckoning image. The link is hidden after a couple of paragraphs into the page text. Insider tip: Click Give Back in the row of links near the top of any page. Then click Get Me Started. (On second thought, don’t get me started…)
	“Share My Genealogy” is not present on the new website. Ditto my comment on Ancestral File.
	Research Helps have been copied into the FamilySearch Wiki and in many cases improved. Click Learn, then search for the topic of interest.
	Research Guidance is a virtual reference consultant found on the old FamilySearch.org website. “Chatty Cathy” (as we sometimes call her) asks you a series of questions about an ancestor and then gives you an ordered list of records to consult, based on the locale, time frame, and the vital event of your ancestor. Because Research Guidance has long been the hidden gem, the Cinderella stepchild of the old FamilySearch.org website, I fear Cathy won’t find her way to the new website.
	The Wiki is not really a part of the old website. It is part of the new website.
	Ask a Question is a link to the Forums, also a new, not old, website.
	The online research classes have been copied to the new website. Click on Learn, then click on a link you can’t see until you scroll the page down. Don’t scroll too far or the link will disappear off the top of the page. Don’t scroll too little or the link will not appear. Do a Goldilocks scroll. Don’t click “Research Courses.” The color looks like a link to me, but it is not. Keep reading, scrolling if necessary. Insider hint: Click on View the Courses.
	Find information about the Salt Lake Family History Library by clicking on FamilySearch Centers, scrolling to the bottom of the page, and clicking the hidden link. Insider Hint: To find hidden links, move your mouse around over possible spots. When the cursor changes (a pointing finger on most browsers), it is pointing to a link.
	To find a nearby family history center, click on FamilySearch Centers, enter the location, and click Search. Notice the snazzy new map.
	“The site currently does not provide information about genealogical institutes, university and home study courses on family history, online genealogical presentations, and upcoming genealogical conferences. Much of this information will be available in future updates of the site.”
	This is redundant. I covered it in the Search Records menu.
	It looks like the same Help Center software added a few years ago to the old website, and used on the new FamilySearch Tree website, is being used on the new site.

To learn more about the differences between the soon-to-be new www.FamilySearch.org and classic FamilySearch.org, start at beta.familysearch.org, click on Help, then “What are the Differences between Classic FamilySearch and Beta FamilySearch?” Use the interactive guide. And click “View or Print Handout” to access “Adjusting to the New Version of www.familysearch.org (8 December 2010).”