The world famous Family History Library in Salt Lake City, Utah recently
announced that it is making its popular classes available for free on
FamilySearch.org.
Now you can access these classes at anytime you wish. Quoting from an
article in the…
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Added by James Tanner on March 15, 2010 at 6:28pm —
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In my frequent visits to the New
FamilySearch Website, I find that one or
another of my many, many relatives has added yet another set of birth
dates or death dates to one of my grandfathers, great-grandfathers or
great-great-grandfathers (or grandmothers). These regular additions to
the existing information in New
FamilySearch would not be nearly…
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Added by James Tanner on March 12, 2010 at 10:19pm —
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I am intrigued by the issues raised in a series of blogs about
documenting 10 generations. Please see "
Documenting
10 Generations Revisited" by Randy
Seaver and
follow his links. I realize that the topic died a rather quick death in
the blog community. But there is an underlying issue, what kind of
documentation is…
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Added by James Tanner on March 10, 2010 at 8:57am —
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Randy
Seaver's
post on
Genea-Musings
entitled "Can you document all names back 10 generations" highlights a
few interesting issues. One of the first is the fact that I write this
blog from way outside the "in" group of genealogy…
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Added by James Tanner on March 9, 2010 at 8:59am —
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No matter what you think about the recent TV show "Who Do You Think You
Are?," one thing is very evident, Google searches on the term
"genealogy" have spiked in the last couple of days. At the bottom of
this Blog page there is an app that shows the number of Google searches
for two terms, "genealogy" and "family history." Both terms show a
decided upswing in the last few days. The increase in searching for
"genealogy" is dramatic given the recent history.…
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Added by James Tanner on March 8, 2010 at 8:08am —
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The numbers of records added to online databases are getting into the
astronomical scale.
FamilySearch's
Record Search announces the addition of New York State to the 1920
U.S. Census records already online. This addition constitutes an
additional 10.4 million names. With all of the other records being added
daily to the Internet, why…
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Added by James Tanner on March 8, 2010 at 7:56am —
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FamilySearch's
Record
Search Pilot has just added Baja Sur, Nuevo Leon, Sinaloa and
Sonora to the Mexico Catholic Church records. This brings the total
number of states and regions contained in the collection to twelve. If
you are unaware, Mexico…
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Added by James Tanner on March 7, 2010 at 2:30pm —
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In a recent post on Inside Google Books, Google announced completion of their digitization
project with the University of Texas Libraries and the inclusion of over
500,000 unique Latin American volumes…
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Added by James Tanner on March 7, 2010 at 2:01pm —
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The following observations are not intended to be critical of the New
FamilySearch
program or its programmers. It appears, that despite their best efforts,
the relatively unsophisticated users of the program do not understand
or cannot follow the instructions and can thereby ignorantly produce
extensive duplication.
Having observed thousands of Ordinance
Cards printed from New…
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Added by James Tanner on March 6, 2010 at 8:05pm —
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FamilySearch
Record Search has added over 500,000 records from the Cook County,
Illinois Birth Certificate records. The collection includes the City of
Chicago and covers the time period from 1878 to 1922 containing over 1.5
million names. New records were also added to the Netherlands,
Gelderland
Province Civil Registration. The collection…
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Added by James Tanner on March 2, 2010 at 6:18pm —
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WorldCat.org is a major international connection to over 10,000
libraries worldwide and catalogs over 1.5 billion items. Google Books
contains over 10,000,000 digitized books and magazines.
WorldCat.org
and Google Books are now interlinked. If you search for a book on
Google Books and find the item, one of the options is to find the item
in a library. Clicking on this option gives you a link to…
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Added by James Tanner on February 28, 2010 at 4:42pm —
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An
article in Mormon Times, opens the door for almost the first time,
to a main stream airing of some of the most glaring problems with New
FamilySearch.
Although the article is low key, it points out some of more difficult
issues with the program. If you have been following the development of
the program at all, you will…
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Added by James Tanner on February 26, 2010 at 8:22am —
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The Library of Congress, now over 200
years old, is recognized as the largest library in the United States and
has claims to being the largest library in the world. Its collections
are described as follows:
In 1992, the Library
acquired its 100 millionth item. The collections now include
approximately fifteen million books, thirty-nine million manuscripts,
thirteen million photographs, four million maps, more…
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Added by James Tanner on February 23, 2010 at 6:50pm —
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New
FamilySearch
(
NFS) is
much more than a simple database of names, it is a revolutionary way of
presenting genealogical information that has far reaching and even
revolutionary consequences to the way family information is stored,
displayed and maintained. One aspect of the program (if you can call it
that) is the extensive help system.…
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Added by James Tanner on February 22, 2010 at 8:29am —
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Sometimes it take a year or two (or more) for the nature of a major
change to become evident in any human activity. Genealogy has always
been a very narrow and some-what esoteric study. But now,
FamilySearch's
New
FamilySearch
(
NFS)
database constitutes a revolutionary challenge to…
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Added by James Tanner on February 21, 2010 at 10:12pm —
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The newest addition to FamilySearch's Record Search are the Norfolk, Church of England Parish Registers
from 1538 to 1900 and the Brazil, Paraiba region Civil Registrations from
1870 to 2006.
Read… Continue
Added by James Tanner on February 20, 2010 at 3:42pm —
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I know it isn't his original quote, but Val D. Greenwood says, "A good cookbook does not make a good cook." (Greenwood, Val D.
The Researcher's Guide to American Genealogy.
Baltimore, MD: Genealogical Pub. Co, 2000). Neither does good
genealogical instruction…
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Added by James Tanner on February 16, 2010 at 6:18pm —
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FamilySearch's Record Search
has just added 16 counties to the Arkansas County Marriages. It has
also published the Mexico Catholic Church Records consolidating all of
the previously separately published Catholic Church records from
different areas in Mexico. Records from…
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Added by James Tanner on February 14, 2010 at 2:03pm —
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There is a appropriate analogy to many of the questions I am asked at the Mesa Regional Family History Center, it is called building bridges
in the air. In genealogical terms it is called starting with the three
brothers that came from Ireland, Scotland, England, Germany, Norway or
where ever. Quoting from Val Greenwood, (Greenwood, Val D. The …
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Added by James Tanner on February 12, 2010 at 6:50pm —
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The thought occurred to me to try and determine how many digitized books are now (as of February, 2010) online. Then, I would try to
estimate/guess how many of those are genealogy related.
I realize that the task is likely impossible, but I would like to have
some idea of the magnitude of the online book community. My first stop
is
Google Books. It appears that Google doesn't…
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Added by James Tanner on February 10, 2010 at 8:52pm —
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