Genealogy Wise

The Genealogy & Family History Social Network

James Tanner's Blog (321)

Free online classes from the Family History Library

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… Continue

Added by James Tanner on March 15, 2010 at 6:28pm — No Comments

Should New FamilySearch be a wiki?

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… Continue

Added by James Tanner on March 12, 2010 at 10:19pm — No Comments

More thoughts on the 10 generation issue

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… Continue

Added by James Tanner on March 10, 2010 at 8:57am — No Comments

Can you document 10 generations?

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… Continue

Added by James Tanner on March 9, 2010 at 8:59am — 1 Comment

TV Show has huge impact on Google searches

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.…

Continue

Added by James Tanner on March 8, 2010 at 8:08am — No Comments

10.4 million free records added to RecordSearch

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… Continue

Added by James Tanner on March 8, 2010 at 7:56am — No Comments

Record Search adds more Mexican States to the Catholic Church Records







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… Continue

Added by James Tanner on March 7, 2010 at 2:30pm — No Comments

Google completes 500,000 volume digitization project with University of Texas

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…

Continue

Added by James Tanner on March 7, 2010 at 2:01pm — No Comments

Experiment confirms New FamilySearch hypothesis

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… Continue

Added by James Tanner on March 6, 2010 at 8:05pm — No Comments

Record Search adds records from Illinois and the Netherlands

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… Continue

Added by James Tanner on March 2, 2010 at 6:18pm — No Comments

WorldCat.org, Google Books and more...

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… Continue

Added by James Tanner on February 28, 2010 at 4:42pm — No Comments

New FamilySearch Questions finally get public airing

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… Continue

Added by James Tanner on February 26, 2010 at 8:22am — 2 Comments

Researching genealogy at the Library of Congress

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… Continue

Added by James Tanner on February 23, 2010 at 6:50pm — No Comments

Additional thoughts on the revolutionary challenge of New FamilySearch

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.… Continue

Added by James Tanner on February 22, 2010 at 8:29am — No Comments

The revolutionary challenge of New FamilySearch

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… Continue

Added by James Tanner on February 21, 2010 at 10:12pm — No Comments

Reccord Search adds records from Norfolk, England and Paraiba, Brazil

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 — No Comments

More comments on Back to Basics on Genealogical Research







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… Continue

Added by James Tanner on February 16, 2010 at 6:18pm — No Comments

FamilySearch Record Search Update February 14, 2010

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… Continue

Added by James Tanner on February 14, 2010 at 2:03pm — No Comments

Back to basics in genealogical research--duplication of effort

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 …

Continue

Added by James Tanner on February 12, 2010 at 6:50pm — No Comments

How many digital books are there online?

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… Continue

Added by James Tanner on February 10, 2010 at 8:52pm — No Comments

Members

© 2024   Created by IIGSExecDirector.   Powered by

Badges  |  Report an Issue  |  Terms of Service