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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

1. Think like an Archive.

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

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

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

3. Digitize your records. 

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

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

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

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

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

#NGS2013 - Ancestry.com’s Mobile App

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

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

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

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

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

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

 

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Thanks, Aaron, for the demo.

#NGS2013 – Futures for FamilySearch Family Tree

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

#NGS2013 – FamilySearch Family Tree, An Item or Two

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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