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.