Historic collaboration begins

DC Thomson Family History and FamilySearch.org to Make Billions of Records Available for People to Search

October 16, 2013

DC Thomson Family History and FamilySearch.org to make billions of records available for people to search

More than 13 million records launched today on findmypast.com

LONDON, England and SALT LAKE CITY, Utah--Annelies van den Belt, the new CEO of DC Thomson Family History, the British-based leader in online family history and owner of findmypast and Genes Reunited, has announced a major new partnership with US-based FamilySearch.org that will give family history enthusiasts access to billions of records online and new technology to collaboratively research their family roots.

DC Thomson Family History, formerly known as brightsolid online publishing, is collaborating with FamilySearch, which has the largest collections of genealogical and historical records in the world, to deliver a wide range of projects including digital preservation, records search, technological development and the means to allow family historians to share their discoveries.

More than 13 million records from FamilySearch.org launched today on findmypast.com, including major collections of births, marriages and deaths covering America, Australia, and Ireland. Around 600 additional collections, containing millions of records, will follow.

The two organisations have a long history of working together on historical projects, including indexing 132 million records of the 1940 US census and two hundred years of British Army Service Records (Chelsea Pensioners) in a joint digitisation project with The National Archives.

Van den Belt said: “This is fantastic news for our customers all over the world. As a leader in online family history we will be able to offer access to a much wider variety of records dating back hundreds of years and the first batch are ready to search on findmypast. The convenience of searching many treasures from FamilySearch.org along with our own extensive collections will provide rich new insights for our customers.

“This partnership with FamilySearch will accelerate the momentum of our next phase of global growth into new non-English-speaking markets and give more people more access to more records to uncover their family history. This really cements our position as a market leader.”

“We are excited to work with DC Thompson Family History on a vision we both share,” said Dennis Brimhall, CEO of FamilySearch. “Expanding online access to historical records through this type of collaboration can help millions more people discover and share their family’s history.”

DC Thomson Family History is the British-based leader in online family history, which operates major online sites including findmypast, Genes Reunited and the British Newspaper Archive. It launched in America last year with its findmypast brand.

DC Thomson Family History has a strong record of partnerships with non-profit and public sector organisations such as the British Library and The National Archives among many other major archives and organisations around the world.

Seven generation fan chart now available

Printing a Fan Chart

October 7, 2013 By FamilySearch

You can now print a full-color, 7-generation fan chart from within Family Tree. To do so, follow the steps listed below.
Option 1: You can display the fan chart, and print it from the Fan Chart view window.
1. Make sure the person you want to print a fan chart for is in the primary person position.
2. Click the Fan Chart icon located in the upper left of the screen. This will display the fan chart on the screen.






3.Click the Printer icon.






4. Click Print. You many need to wait a few minutes for the chart for format.






Option 2: You can print a fan chart from the person’s details page. To do so, follow the steps listed below.
1. From the details page, click the Fan Chart icon so that the fan chart displays on the screen.
2. Click the Printer icon. You many need to wait a few minutes for the chart for format.
3. Click Print.







The printable fan chart opens in a second tab of your browser. It takes a bit of time to get created. When done, it looks like this:

Wiki Update: 75,000 articles published

FamilySearch Wiki Reaches an Important Milestone

October 1, 2013 By Steve Anderson

FamilySearch has recently reached a rather significant milestone. Its Research Wiki has just published its 75,000^th article. While the number is impressive by itself, the idea that should grab our attention and make us go WOW is the fact that such a large community of genealogists and family historians have worked together to pool their collective knowledge into a single web based library and made it all available to the public—for FREE. It’s like having a worldwide encyclopedia of knowledge for genealogists at your fingertips. This is really big news!
James Tanner, the creator and author of the Genealogy’s Star blog site has written an excellent blog post about this milestone event titled, 75,000 Articles now in the FamilySearch Research Wiki. James Tanner is an expert genealogist and writer. Tanner has contributed several useful articles to the Research Wiki, so he knows what he’s talking about. Click on his article and see what he has to say about this milestone event and see what happens when experts all work together to share knowledge about the world’s records.

Italian Project Update

Indexers Celebrate Record-Setting Italian Ancestors Project Weekend

September 30, 2013 By Courtney Connolly

Did you participate in the Italian Ancestors Project record-setting weekend? On September 13–15, volunteers from around the world joined together to index and arbitrate 134,986 Italian records (approximately 400,000 names). Participants were invited to index and arbitrate over 35,000 Italian records in just 48 hours—slightly more than the previous high. Due to the enthusiasm and dedication of many volunteers, the event goal was significantly exceeded.
This contribution will add significantly to the searchable records available to individuals looking for their Italian ancestors. Thousands of family researchers will be forever grateful for the efforts to make these names available.
Thank you to all who participated in the Italian Ancestors Project record-setting weekend and who continue to contribute to the Italian Ancestors Project. To learn more about this project, including the millions of Italian records remaining to be indexed, visit FamilySearch.org/Italian-ancestors.

Where can you see 1,000,000 photos?

We Hit One Million Photos!

September 10, 2013 By Rob Goates

Since we launched the enhanced FamilySearch.org in April, we have seen a tremendous amount of interest in our photos and stories features.  We are pleased (excited! ecstatic!) to announce a major milestone—as of this week, more than one million photos have been uploaded to the site.
“With the help of our users, we are creating the world’s largest, free collection of family history photos,” said Tim Cross, senior product manager of FamilySearch Photos and Stories. “We see this as a major achievement toward preserving, sharing, and uniquely identifying family history memories for people from all over the world.”
All photos uploaded to FamilySearch Photos and Stories will be preserved forever in our state-of-the-art archive facilities. The tags identifying the people in the photos will be preserved as well, so descendants will have a permanent, central location to find and access these precious ancestral photos.
To discover any photos and stories already submitted of your ancestors, simply visit the FamilySearch Photos and Stories page and click on the blue “Find photos of your ancestors” button (you will be prompted to log in).

UPDATE: Here is the one millionth photo!

Ancestry.com and FamilySearch to work on records together

FamilySearch and Ancestry.com Working Together to Make More Records Available Online

September 6, 2013 By FamilySearch

FamilySearch and Ancestry.com recently announced a joint agreement to begin a 5-year effort to digitize and index more than 1 billion records from around the world. FamilySearch is excited to be a partner in this significant project that will provide greater accessibility to these valuable records. Building strategic partnerships is and will continue to be an important part of our vision, and we look forward to additional exciting announcements in the future.
This partnership will result in making significant global historical records available to people everywhere. Dennis Brimhall, President of FamilySearch, added yesterday, “Expanding online access to historical records through this type of collaboration can help millions more people discover and share their family’s history.”
FamilySearch will continue to make our records available to the public for free. It remains our commitment to make as many genealogical records and resources available at no cost.
We look forward to more exciting developments as we continue to work with leading organizations in the genealogy community. The future of family history is truly exciting.

Julia Gillard speaks to young adults in Australia, gets gift of Genealogy

Politics off the agenda as Julia Gillard makes rare public appearance

Date

September 2, 2013

Adrian Lowe

Reporter, theage.com.au

Julia Gillard with partner Tim Mathieson at their Altona home. Photo: Craig Abraham

Former prime minister Julia Gillard made a rare public appearance at the weekend, making a keynote speech at a religious function in her western Melbourne electorate.
Just hours after Kevin Rudd launched Labor's election campaign, Ms Gillard was the guest of honour at an event of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints, where she was presented with a series of documents detailing her family history.
Ms Gillard, who is retiring from politics after Saturday's election, spoke of the influence her parents had on her during her speech at the Werribee church.

But apart from a brief reference on how to keep focused under pressure, political events were not discussed. Instead, Ms Gillard talked about families, and said she now had an understanding of a broader sense of family since becoming a great-aunt.
In front of a crowd of about 250, mostly young adults, the former PM said learning to prioritise had been helpful while she was working as prime minister.
"There is always a million things happening at once [when you're prime minister] and you could lose the hours of every day chasing down the million things that are happening, or you could concentrate and do the two or three big things that are going to make the longest-term impact or difference," she said.
"When people are running at you with the million things, it can be hard to discipline for that, but it's incredibly important discipline and I think the younger you learn it, the easier it becomes."
The church, colloquially known as Mormons, makes family history work a priority because of its belief that families continue beyond mortality.
Volunteer researchers traced back Ms Gillard's ancestry to four generations, and provided her with a written history featuring stories about her ancestors.
The church has previously presented Mr Rudd and his predecessor, John Howard, with their genealogy, as well as US presidents Barack Obama and George W Bush. Sunday's presentation was the first in Australia to be held in public.
Ms Gillard, the member for Labor, is being replaced as Labor candidate in the seat by Joanne Ryan.

Indexing experiences revealed

Community Corner: Indexers Share Their Stories

August 29, 2013 By Jennifer Anderson

Today the indexing community spans the world, with volunteers participating in this meaningful work on nearly every continent. At FamilySearch, we frequently receive stories from indexers like you who are excited to share their positive and life-changing experiences. Here are two of the stories that we’d like to pass along.
Everyone Can Make a Difference, Heber, Utah (Name Withheld)
Every summer, a campground in Utah welcomes thousands of young women between the ages of 12 and 18 for a week of fun and adventure. Recently, this camp hosted a few young women with special needs. One of these beautiful young women was afflicted with cerebral palsy. Her condition was so limiting that her father had to sit behind her in one of the paddleboats and hold her upright because she only has control of her right forefinger. Even with her physical limitations, this amazing young woman has indexed 400,000 names. That number isn’t a mistake—400,000 names indexed with only one finger! While this young woman may be physically challenged, she knows that she can contribute to this great work and does so enthusiastically.
The Power to Change Lives, Kyiv, Ukraine
Pavel started indexing over three years ago when invited by friends to participate. He desired to help but didn’t fully understand the importance of the work he was helping with. Still, he continued to index and recently opened a project and had an experience that dramatically changed his understanding.
As he was indexing a child’s last name and date of death, the name stuck in his mind, as it was a very interesting surname. A few names later, he saw the same last name for another child, and the parents were the same. Later in the document, he found the same last name and parents for another child. Going back, he saw the first child had died at the age of one. The second child he had recorded was only three. Further down the image, a record indicated that another child of the same family had died at the age of six. Just two days later, a fourth child passed on, followed by another sibling, age eight. In all, the family lost five children in only a few short days.
Further down, another entry appeared for the mother. All had died in the terrible Russian cholera epidemic of 1910. Finally, after the father had buried all of his children and his wife, a final entry noted his own death. But against all the record-keeping norms of the day, the father’s record listed not cholera as the cause of death, but sadness.
Struggling with his emotions, Pavel explained, “After I read all of that, I couldn’t do indexing for a while. I understood—I cared now; I cared about everything that was happening to the children.
“In retrospect, I see that our life continues, and stories may repeat themselves. It’s not just with my mind that I now understand. Now I feel it in my heart. After that [experience], I started to be more attentive to my children and those who surround me.”
Share Your Story
Do you have a story you would be willing to share with the indexing community? We’d love to hear from you! Send us your stories to be featured in future newsletters, including any of the following:

• Stories you’ve found while indexing.
• Success stories resulting from your efforts.
• How indexing has helped you in your own family research.
• Why you index and what indexing means to you.
• Fun things going on in your community to encourage others to index.

If you have something to share, email your stories to fsindexing@familysearch.org.

FGS will join RootsTech in 2015

Federation of Genealogical Societies (FGS) to Team up with RootsTech for 2015 Conference

August 27, 2013 By Paul G. Nauta

22 August 2013 – SALT LAKE CITY, UT.   RootsTech announced on August 22, that The Federation of Genealogical Societies (FGS) will hold its 2015 National Conference in conjunction with the popular RootsTech conference in Salt Lake City, Utah, February 12-14, 2015. RootsTech, hosted by FamilySearch, has quickly become the largest family history conference in North America. The unique culture of the RootsTech conference attracts growing throngs of attendees from around the world both in-person and online seeking to discover and share family connections, stories, and history.
FGS represents the over 500,000 members of hundreds of genealogical societies and presents an annual national conference program that helps strengthen and link the genealogical community. Conducting both conferences at the same time in the same facility gives interested attendees the option to conveniently benefit from both conference programs for a nominal additional cost.
The Salt Palace Convention Center will be the common venue, and both FamilySearch and FGS will produce a unique event addressing the educational needs of the family history, technology and genealogical society communities. Attendees will see familiar elements of both events including dynamic keynote presentations, hands-on workshops, a Society Showcase and free Expo Hall.
“The FGS conference attracts genealogy society leaders that serve the needs of genealogy patrons worldwide, and RootsTech caters to a very different audience of all ages seeking to discover, preserve, and share their family stories and history,” said Dan Martinez, RootsTech Director of Marketing. “Holding the two annual conferences in the same venue will create a rich learning environment and increase benefits to all attendees.”
Registration details for both events will be available in August 2014.
FGS President D. Joshua Taylor states, “FamilySearch has been a valued partner and sponsor for FGS during its past conferences. It only makes sense for both organizations to work together and produce what will be the most talked about genealogy event of 2015.” Taylor added that such an event brings the best of RootsTech and FGS conferences together under one roof and will offer genealogists and family historians a wide array of activities and educational opportunities.
About RootsTech
RootsTech is a unique global family history event where people of all ages learn to discover and share their family stories and connections through technology. The first annual conference was held in 2011, in Salt Lake City, Utah. Hosted by FamilySearch and sponsored by leading genealogical organizations, the conference includes hands-on demonstrations and forums to provide a highly interactive environment and accelerate learning. Content is geared all skill levels and ages, including a Family Discover Day for youth ages 12-18.

Search for records right from FamilyTree

CEO Corner: Now You Can Find Historical Records about Your Ancestors Right from Your Own Family Tree

August 20, 2013 By Dennis Brimhall

In my 18 months at the helm, I’ve been excited about all the new features we have been releasing here at FamilySearch. However, we have a new search function that is one of the most effective new tools that FamilySearch has ever created: search records within an ancestor page in FamilySearch Family Tree.
I have yet to see anyone who tries this amazing feature who doesn’t find huge research success. Searching for records from within an ancestor page in FamilySearch Family Tree is a great new way to find historical records you may not have found in your previous searching.
Login to FamilySearch.org, and go to Family Tree.

1. Click the name of a deceased person in the tree, and click Person to go to his or her Person page.
2. Click the new Search Records link. FamilySearch searches our historical records using the person’s name and first vital date.
3. The search results open in another browser window and show records that match for the person. Click a record to see the details of the record or to see a copy of the original record.
4. The full record will be displayed. To add the record to the person on Family Tree, click Attach to Family Tree. You can also click Add to My Source Box to add the record to your source box.
5. If you click Attach to Family Tree, a box will appear with the name of the person to whom you want to attach the record. If the box does not appear, click History List to show the list of people you recently viewed in Family Tree, or click Search Family Tree to begin a search for the person to whom you want to attach the record.
6. When you click History List, you will see a list of people you viewed in Family Tree or people you set as a root. The History List remembers the last 50 people you put at the root of the tree or whose personal details page you looked at. When you find the person you want to attach the record to, click Select.
7. Verify that this is the correct person. Fill in the reason the record is valid for this person. Then click Attach.

Keep in mind that this search feature may not find all the records that are in the FamilySearch database. The records that are found are based on the ancestor information used for your search. That information consists of the person’s name and the earliest vital date (birth, christening, death, or burial) on the person’s record. The automatic search will find a lot of the records in the database, but it may not find everything.
If you think more records may be available, try other search strategies to find all available records. For example, if the record contains a woman’s maiden name, you won’t find records about her that show her married name only (such as census or death records).
The new Search Records feature on ancestor pages in FamilySearch Family Tree searches for vital dates with a range of plus or minus two years. Previously, it only used an exact year date. This date range is useful for finding records such as census records in which birth dates may have been calculated and may be slightly off.
I am sure you will be delighted with how this great new feature makes it easier to find records you may have missed that are specific to an ancestor or records that have recently been added to the FamilySearch online collections.

Teaching Children to Love Family History

August 15, 2013 By Steve Anderson

Kristiana Silver knows that genealogy and family history aren’t just about old people. It’s not something that you have to wait until you are retired to start doing. Family history is also about young kids and mid-lifers learning about their ancestors who were also kids and teenagers once upon a time. It’s learning about people how lived, played and enjoyed doing the same things we do today. That’s the message that Kristiana Silver of Salt Lake City, Utah is teaching her 4 young sons. Her boys range in age from 4 to 10 years old. They enjoy a trip to the cemetery as much as their mom does. In fact, she’s teaching a lot of other people that same message.
BillionGraves blogger Liza Moncur has shared some fun things that Kristiana Silver does with her boys to teach them a deep love and appreciation for their ancestors. You might be surprised to see how much her boys know about their ancestors, even at their young age. Click this link to read more about what Kristina Silver’s does with her young family to teach them about their ancestors in a way that her young boys find fun and exciting.

Want more records?

If you are complaining about a lack of records, there is something you can do about it. No matter where you live on the planet there are projects underway to digitally copy and index records. Records are being intentionally destroyed, but many more are dying of old age. I was in the Bear Lake County court house in Paris, Idaho recently. The books are beautiful and in excellent condition. That is not the case everywhere. In many cases, it is a race against time and indifference to the value of records. Get involved in the race to preserve our history!

Family History Books available digitally for first time

FamilySearch Family History Books Reaches a New Milestone

August 5, 2013 By Carol B. Moss

FamilySearch has announced they have reached a milestone in their collection of Family History Books found at FamilySearch.org.  More than 100,000 books have now been scanned and published online by the partnership of the Family History Library, Allen County Public Library, Brigham Young University Harold B. Lee Library, Brigham Young University Hawaii Joseph F. Smith Library, Church History Library, Houston Public Library – Clayton Library Center for Genealogical Research, and the Mid-Continent Public Library – Midwest Genealogy Center.  Family History Books are available to search and use on the FamilySearch.org website and can be viewed by clicking Search and then clicking Books.
The majority of the online books are family histories, with a smaller portion made up of cemetery records, local and county histories, genealogy magazines and how-to-books, gazetteers, and medieval histories and pedigrees. These valuable resources are viewed by more than 100,000 people a month.

New additions to photos on FamilySearch

Find Photos of Your Ancestors on FamilySearch

August 2, 2013 By Matt Wright

Not long ago, the Photos landing page was redesigned to include access to a new tool—the “Find photos of your ancestors” automated search. Clicking the blue button initiates a search of your tree to find closely related people that have been tagged in photos—by you or anyone else—and you are taken to your People page with the results. In some cases, people are finding photos uploaded by someone else of more than 50 ancestors—pretty great, right?  Try it by clicking the blue button (you’ll need to sign in):

It’s very possible that I just lost my readers, and you are now discovering photos of ancestors that you have never seen before. Good enough. But just in case I held on to a few of you, here is some more information on a couple of interesting features that can be found once you get to the People page.
“Filter people by” drop-down
In addition to viewing all people, you can filter the view on the People page to view those:

• Added by you
• Added by someone else
• Those not linked to Family Tree 

View my relationship 

Clicking on the golden ribbon (indicating that the person was added by someone else) will launch a pop-up window that shows how you are connected to the person. This feature makes it easier to understand family relationships when the name or photo might not be familiar to you.

 

We hope you enjoy these new Photos features and that you will share them with your family members. Remember, the more they add to Photos and Stories, the more you will see on your own People page. It is a perfect way to see favorite family photos that you remember but haven’t seen in a while. Take my aunt for example. She called me the other day, trying to find a photo of her grandpa in a truck that she remembers looking at with her family, but she can’t find her copy. I am now on the lookout in my collection for this photo, and when I find it, all I will have to do is upload it to FamilySearch Photos and Stories, tag my great-grandpa and link him to Family Tree, and she will have her own copy.

Search feature enhancements on FamilyTree

Search Gets Major Feature Enhancements

July 22, 2013 By Robert Kehrer

As part of our continual effort to provide the most powerful genealogical research system we can, FamilySearch is pleased to announce a number of feature enhancements to the search function on the website. These great new features will make finding and documenting your ancestors’ lives more efficient and productive.
Attach a Source Person to a Family Tree Person
FamilySearch has a goal of properly linking each of the persons found in the world’s historical records to the Family Tree. To help facilitate accurate person-to-person linking, an “Attach to Family Tree” button is now available on each person’s details page in historical records.

When you click the button, you will see a list of persons in the Family Tree that match the person on the record. You may also choose a name from your history list, showing the people you most recently viewed in the Family Tree, or you can initiate a search of the Family Tree. Once you have identified the correct person in the Family Tree, click Attach to create a link to the source on the person’s page in the Family Tree, add the source link to the sourcebox, and provide a reason for making the connection.
View HR Person in Family Tree
When viewing a person’s details page in historical records, you may want to know if the person has already been linked to someone in the Family Tree. If you find the record of a person who is already linked to someone in the Family Tree, you will see a “View in Family Tree” button. Clicking that button will open a person card, which gives a summary of the data from Family Tree and links to the person’s pedigree in the Family Tree. If the record has been linked to duplicates of the person in Family Tree, all the linked duplicates will be shown, and you can switch between these duplicates within the pop-up person card.

Display Results by Collection
To help you make better sense of and explore search results, FamilySearch now allows you to view results grouped by collection. When you initiate a search, you will see a new tabbed interface above the search results. The Records tab is the default and gives the actual results of the search, and the Collections tab presents a collection-by-collection summary.

The ability to see the results of a search grouped by collection helps you see what collections are available. It also guides you to collections with the most matches in a record type and keeps a single collection from being overrepresented in the top hits.
If you click the Collections tab, you will see the collections present in the set of search results, grouped by record type with the five collections with the most hits shown for each type. You can sort the collection lists alphabetically by title or by hit count. If you desire to see all the collections of a specific record type, click Show All in the header for that type.
Clicking a collection name will take you to the Records tab, with the results on that tab filtered by the selected collection. The Collection filter below the Refine your search form will still show, but it will now display the Collections tab, which replaces its previous fly-out functionality.
Export Search Results
A new tool visible above the search results for logged in users allows the export of a page of results to a spreadsheet file. This file can be opened in most common spreadsheet applications. The exported file contains the search parameters used for the search and a date and time stamp for reference. The search results are presented in rows, and each column represents a unique piece of indexed data for the results.

Opening the results in a spreadsheet enables many analysis, annotation, and sorting option that are not available on the website. For example, you may want to run the same search each month and compare the results, looking for new hits. You may want to sort the results across multiple indexed fields, or you may want to flag each result with a Yes, No, or Maybe to help organize the results for further search efforts.
The Export Results button will export the current page of results and is only available when you are logged into FamilySearch.org.
Display Role in Record
The FamilySearch search system will identify and return all instances of a person from the databases, even if the person is not the primary person on a record. A result with no events indicated for the matched person is a good indication that the record may be about someone else. It is good to locate your great-grandfather on a marriage record, even if the record is for the marriage of his daughter, but it helps to know quickly his role in the record.

FamilySearch now displays the role of each matched person, even if the record is not about the person. If the information is available on census records, FamilySearch also displays the relationship to the head of the house.
Restrict Record Results to Country and Sub-country
Sometimes you may be looking for all evidence of an ancestor and will use the Search with a Life Event or Search with a Relationship fields to find all records for that ancestor. At other times, you may have a very focused research goal of finding that specific birth record from a particular county in a specific state to document a conclusion about an ancestor’s birth.

To facilitate very precise record searching, FamilySearch allows you to designate the country and next level state, province, or county as the required origin for all records. The search results will show records that were created by a record-keeping authority or they will have a primary event on the records that occurs within the specified jurisdiction.
Enhanced Copy Function on Record Details
A common thing to do after finding an ancestor in the historical records is to copy all the data on the record to research notes. Researchers have requested that we enhance the copy function so that all the related people on the record and citation are included in the copy. When it is available, the related people and citation information is now included in the copy after the standard person data.

Filter the FamilySearch Catalog Titles by Center or Library
Several years ago the old Family History Library catalog was renamed the FamilySearch Catalog to indicate that its resources extend beyond those held in the Salt Lake Family History Library. The old catalog allowed users to filter search results to the holdings in a specific location. We have now enabled similar functionality on the new catalog. Users can directly search for resources held at a number of family history centers and regional libraries using a dropdown location selector on the main search form.

If you view a title that has films or copies held in multiple locations, you will see a dropdown location selector that will filter the holdings to those at your chosen center or library.

We hope you find these enhancements to search beneficial to your research. Let us know what you think!