Tag: familysearch Page 1 of 2

family-history-guide-front-page

Back in July, while I was still in the long process of moving, I was contacted by Bob Taylor, CEO of the Family History Guide (see image above). He was looking to include information about my blog onto his website as well as interview me on genealogy. In exchange, he wanted me to let my readers know about his website.

Months later, I finally have the chance to type up my review! It took a while to actually go through the website because there is SO MUCH to it! Really, it’s quite an amazing place for beginners in genealogy or anyone who wishes to know more about how to use FamilySearch.org to the best of their ability!

About the Family History Guide

Bob Taylor, the CEO of The Family History Guide (FHG) along with Bob Ives, created this guide for those who feel overwhelmed with all the information out there. With all the websites that offer this and that, many people aren’t sure where to go next. The FHG is there to help guide them. It was presented at RootsTech in 2016 and that introduction helped to place the guide on the portal of the FamilySearch.org website. Although, it is not endorsed or sponsored by the LDS church, it is geared to those using the FamilySearch website for the majority of their genealogy research.

Here is their promotional video to help explain the basic purpose of the FHG:

So a brief run-down of what The Family History Guide has to offer both new and experienced genealogists:

It’s FREE
Step-by-step instructions for several projects (like creating a family tree on FamilySearch, using specific record sets, etc.)
Videos explaining the website and how to use it
Resources for training, children, and other genealogical endeavors
It’s pretty much a site created to help guide a new genealogist on where to go next in their research

In Depth Review

To Begin

Probably one of my favorite items that the FHG offers is a guide on basic computer skills, which I feel may be one of the most overlooked items for those beginning in genealogy. The items covered here are what you would expect really: using the mouse, using the keyboard, keyboard shortcuts, finding things on your desktop, internet basics, etc. It does include information for both a Mac and a PC as well as information on Windows 10.

Then of course, are the Family History Basics. This includes items like: genealogy definitions/terms, genealogy online, family myths, interviewing relatives, building a family tree online, information on several websites including FamilySearch, Ancestry, FindMyPast, MyHeritage, and American Ancestors. It’s a great place for anyone just beginning to start out.

Projects

Once the basics are covered, you can move on to the projects.

fhg-projects

There are eight projects on the Family History Guide and to me it’s the bulk of what the website has to offer everyone. It begins with the project you see above: the family tree. This specifically has to do with building a family tree on FamilySearch.org and the little nuances the site offers.

On the left hand side of the project page, you’ll find several resources. There is a tracking sheet (so you can go as slow or as fast as you wish), topics, the vault, and training (I’ll get into those last three a bit later).

The project is chopped into goals. In the first project there are 14 goals, and they really are a simple, step-by-step process for everything you can do with building a family tree on FamilySearch. It covers navigation, views, finding people on the tree, adding information, adding ancestors, changing information, adding notes, duplicate ancestors, and more.

The rest of the projects follow the same guidelines with goals for each project, a tracker, and resources, etc. The projects are as follows:

Project 2: Memories: This involves organizing and managing the several different kinds of documents (including photos) you already have and will eventually get. It covers gathering them, safeguarding them, organizing them, interviewing relatives, and adding the information in the Memory section on your family tree on FamilySearch.
Project 3: Descendants/Ordinances: If you aren’t an LDS member, then the Descendants part of the project is for you. That part of the project focuses on descendancy research. The Ordinances section focuses more on LDS items, which I am very unfamiliar with.
Project 4: Discover: This is the basics of family history research, which includes creating a focus and a strategy – key things in genealogy research!
Project 5: Indexing: Indexing on FamilySearch is probably one of my favorite things to do! This has all the information you need to get started on helping to index information onto FamilySearch.
Project 6: Help: This includes information on how to get help if you need it as well as how to help others with their genealogy. It also has information on publishing a family history.
Project 7: Tech: This covers several technological items that can help you in genealogy including social media, software, and webinars.
Project 8: DNA: The title says it all! It’s about DNA basics and using it in your research.

Training and Children

Besides all the wonderful information in the projects, the FHG also includes information on getting children involved. It’s a question I hear often in societies, how do we entice younger people to get involved in genealogy, and the site has some wonderful ideas and information for not just younger children but older ones as well.

The Training Section is for use in classroom settings, presentation settings, or one-on-one settings. It includes PowerPoints on using the FHG as well as just good information on how to create and prepare a presentation. It includes resources for tracking your progress, tips and tricks, and an evaluation form you can download.

Topics

The Topics area is really quite vast. It’s listed alphabetically for any topic that you may want to know more about in genealogy. It includes items like adoption, record sets, researching in specific countries/states, immigration, specific ethnic questions (like Jewish genealogy or African American genealogy), and more.

The Vault

Here is where you can find anything discussed in the website. It has all the resources and documents mentioned throughout as well as extra items. A highlight here is to check out the sections dedicated to research in other countries. It’s a great place to look if you’re going into a new area of research!

The Family History Guide Explorer

The Family History Guide Explorer is a newsletter published twice a month. It’s free and goes right to your email as a very colorful and clickable pdf. It holds some great information on what is happening on the website as well as other genealogical news.

The September 1st issue, the fourth one, includes an interview with me! You can find that issue here.

Overview

Overall, this website is large, but very well put-together. You can easily go from project to project, learning more and more about genealogy without being overwhelmed. It has a LOT to offer anyone, no matter the level, but is particularly wonderful for those just beginning. Although the focus is on using the FamilySearch website for the majority of items, because FamilySearch is free, it is likely the most accessible website to anyone wishing to know more about genealogy.

I highly recommend checking out the website and adding it to your genealogy toolbox!

the-family-history-guide

Tuesday’s Tip: Indexing with FamilySearch

By Nichelle Barra

On 11 August 2015

In Research, Resources

Don’t you just love being able to type a name into a database like those on Ancestry.com or FamilySearch.org and get results?

You may have noticed that not all databases get pulled into these searches though; but you are welcome to go through page by page, to find what you’re looking for. It takes a long time and can be quite tedious. Don’t you wish those items were indexed?

Well this is where you can come in and pay it forward to the genealogy community!

FamilySearch.org is currently hosting a World Wide Indexing event and anyone can become involved in this project!

Get Started

You can check out some more information here but it’s quite easy to get started. First, you do need an account with FamilySearch – it’s free! You fill out the form and you’re set! Very simple.

Once you have that, you can then begin indexing. First, you’ll need to download the indexing program.

It doesn’t take too long and then you’ll have a small icon that says FamilySearch Indexing on your desktop (well, that’s where I put mine anyway). Double click, log in – and start!

How To Index

Once you log-in, you’ll have a tip of the day show up. You can disable this or not. I leave mine up because the reminders are nice. Your screen will look somewhat similar to this:

You have three main spaces here: My Batches, My Messages, and what I call My Results.

My Batches

Here is where you have a list of files you have chosen to index. In the above picture, mine is currently blank. To download a new batch, you just click on the download batch button. You can also choose to work offline or online.

My Messages

Self-explanatory really. Right now there’s a message up about the Worldwide Indexing Event. You can dismiss these messages as you read them.

My Results

Here you can view several different tabs. The above picture shows my goals, which I currently have nothing set. If you wanted to set some goals for yourself, that’s where you’d do it and keep track of your goal.

My history shows your records you’ve submitted and your points. Your points just let you see what you’ve contributed to FamilySearch indexing for the month, the quarter, the year, and since you’ve started.

Arbitration Results tells you the percentage of how much what you indexed matches with a reviewer. After you submit your work it goes to an arbitrator who goes through it once more. This is a good tool for seeing where you may need improvement (especially when reading those handwritten documents!).

The Indexing Links is the last tab and has guides, tutorials, projects, wiki’s, etc. for you to look through if you so wish.

Downloading a Batch

As I said, you click the download batch button to get your documents. A box will pop up and here you’ll have some choices

In the upper right hand corner, you’ll see a link to edit your preferences. That takes you outside of the indexing program where you can choose your email preferences, project difficulty level, and project languages.

Once set, in the download batch box, you can choose to show all projects or your preferred projects. You can then organize the projects by project name, description, level, or points by clicking on the heading box of the category you wish to organize. For example, organizing by level will give you a result like this:

Notice that it has all the beginning projects listed and it goes to intermediate and then advanced. Organizing this way is nice, especially if you’re new to indexing.

Once you find a project you’d like to work on, you can indicate how many batches you’d like in the lower left hand corner. You can use the arrows or type it in but you can’t have more than 10 batches at a time. You can also click the view sample button if you wish to see what it looks like before taking on a project.

So once you find a project you wish to work on, select it, choose how many batches you’d like, then hit ok and it will take you to the project indexing screen.

There are three boxes on this and are self explanatory. You’ll want to focus at first on the bottom right box for the specific project instructions.

Each project is unique, so I highly recommend reviewing all the instructions for the project before indexing. You can also see many image examples and see exactly how and what they want you to index as well as what to do when you can’t view the image or read the handwriting. A lot of this repeats and you’ll become more and more familiar with the process as you continue to index.

Once done with a batch, you submit it and it’ll disappear from your list on your start page.

What if I Can’t Do It?

No problem! Just send it back. There’s a handy button for that:

For whatever reason you can’t complete a batch, you can return it. If it’s too far above your level, you downloaded more than you can do, etc. Just send it back! It’ll ask if it is something for other indexers or if there’s a problem with the image, so click what is appropriate and send it back! No harm done 🙂

You’ll notice that there are due dates for batches. (In the list of projects, ones that are close to their due date can be in red to draw attention to them. So be aware that those have a shorter time-limit than the rest.) Once that due date is up, the batch will be removed from your start screen. So be sure to take on as many batches as is feasible for the time frame! If you decide to download the batches and work offline, you’ll need to be even more cognizant of that time frame.

Worldwide Indexing Event

If you’d like to find some more information on the event, check out Dear Myrtle! She has had several posts on her blog about it, like Saturday’s post. She also has a schedule of events if you wish to participate with her! Today’s indexing session is complete but check out her schedule for other events.

The event goes from August 7-14 so you definitely have time to contribute! There is a goal for 100,000 people to participate in this event and they are nearly halfway there! It’s a lot of fun to index regardless of this event so even if you don’t make it during this week definitely check it out and help other people find their ancestors just a bit faster. 🙂

You can check out the FamilySearch Indexing Facebook Page or the FamilySearch Facebook page too for more information.

Enjoy!

Disclaimer: I am not affiliated with FamilySearch.org nor a member of the LDS church; I happen to find indexing fun and enjoy being able to help others search a bit easier 🙂

Tuesday’s Tip on Wednesday: FamilySearch.org

By Nichelle Barra

On 24 June 2015

In Method, Research, Resources

This would normally be a Tuesday’s Tip but I was trying to finish many things yesterday and didn’t get the chance to do a blog post. So here it is today!

Yesterday evening, one of the local genealogy groups hosted someone from the LDS church to come and talk about FamilySearch.org. I am already familiar with the website and I have an account because I index with them, so I wasn’t quite sure what I would learn from the talk as I thought she would discuss some of the beginner type of items. I was pleasantly surprised at how wonderfully informative the chat was!

Here are two of the best things that I learned:

When you have a family tree on their site (free and ALWAYS public – you can’t make it private), there are many different ways to view it:

The familiar landscape view

The familiar portrait view

My FAVORITE way to see things! The Fan Chart

New to me, the Descendancy View

I did not know there were that many options! As you can see, my tree is very sparse on familysearch.org but I plan on changing that!

Once you begin a tree on FamilySearch.org you can go to treeseek.com, which is part of FamilySearch.org. You can sign in with your familysearch log in, and then you can create a BEAUTIFUL fan chart with 9 Generations!!!! There are other very neat things you can do there as well like photo charts, name clouds, pedigrees, and smaller generational charts:

Overall, the presentation was great and left me excited to put a tree on FamilySearch.

Here are a few things to keep in mind when using FamilySearch for your online tree:

The purpose of FamilySearch is to find the dead, not the living. So if you want to find more and more cousins, this may not be the best site for you.
FamilySearch has open, public trees ONLY. If you want private, you won’t want to use this site, but you will also lose out on some of the neat things I showed you above.
People can change your tree – because it’s public. Of course, you can discuss these changes with the person who changed it and undo the changes or keep the changes as the discussion progresses. This is a big hurdle for many people to get over, if at all. Having documentation to prove one way or the other is incredibly helpful.

One thing I found interesting is that our presenter showed a video where they discussed “my-tree-itis” where you don’t want to share your information or allow others to make changes on your tree. Since I have a private tree on ancestry.com, I completely get this! When people want to change things I admit that sometimes I take it personally; however, if they have evidence to back up their claim, I will gladly change the information!

I can see both sides to the arguments: keep it private so you know the information is correct and share with those you choose; keep it public so others can benefit from it as it is their family as well, which is also what genealogy can do for you: find new family members!

With those two arguments in mind, I did create a tree on the website. I’m starting from scratch on there though, not uploading a GEDCOM. The reasoning is because the ancestor may already be in the system and this prevents creating new people when a merge would be plenty. So, now I have a place to keep all my familysearch research! Will I add items I find outside of FamilySearch? Maybe, more so if it helps to get further back in a generation. I appreciate that this site is for helping and sharing with others who are family. I also appreciate that you can discuss changes on your tree to show why you believe as you do. I’m willing to give it a shot!

Have any of you used familysearch.org as your main tree online? Pros? Cons? Advice?

Happy hunting everyone!

Quick Tip: FamilySearch County Wikis

By Nichelle Barra

On 4 May 2015

In Problem, Research, Resources

I know I have mentioned FamilySearch’s wikis before but I want to emphasize their county pages. Above you see the Wiki main page for FamilySearch (click here to go there or you can click on search and then choose Wiki). You can click on any country to get information on that area. Is the information complete and accurate? Well that will depend.

What is a Wiki

I’m positive that most of you know of wikipedia. The thing that is the best (in my opinion) about wiki’s can also be the worst – they are collaborative pages that users can edit and add to. This can be great because there are many people out there with a lot of great knowledge as well as being able to update information as it happens!. If you think about that genealogically, that means that someone can add all the information they know about a specific place, group, record, etc, as well as when events may make the records no longer available. This is a wonderful idea!

Of course, this is also a bit iffy. We all know by now that not all that information is correct. However, it’s up to the community of users to find that information and correct it when that happens. Wikipedia has gotten much better at catching that mis-information over time, even closing some pages due to the conflicts but tends to also opens a forum for discussion on the conflict. It helps that you can add where the information came from (citing your sources!) so people can verify the information on their own.

FamilySearch Wiki

The FamilySearch wiki has specific pages that can be adopted by certain groups but anyone who has a log-in can enter and change the information. Since this community is one of sharing knowledge, I do believe that the majority of this information is accurate and there are links normally placed throughout the site so you can verify the information.

Searching on the Wiki

The main page (shown above) has a map where you can click on your area of interest. Since I’m talking about counties, I’ll focus on the United States. So you’ll click on North America on the map, then the United States on the next page.

Scroll down the US page until you see this map:

Then click on your state of interest. You’ll see a county map of the state next (all states have this, I checked). Click your county of interest and viola! You’ll see a page (hopefully) filled with wonderful information:

This is the St. Joseph, Indiana page. As you can see it was adopted by the Indiana Genealogical Society who put in the first bits of information on the county. As the county genealogist for St. Joseph County, I have also added information on what you can find here and added information from the local society.

The information is wonderful! You can see when the county started to keep their vital records, boundary change information, record loss information, and where are specific records. This is an amazing resource and tends to be my first stop when I enter in to a new county for research.

How You Can Help

Of course, not all information will be complete. Sometimes all that will be there is what the FamilySearch volunteers have added, which include what records they have for the county/state. However, sometimes there can be nothing at all:

A borough of Alaska

Grant it, this is a borough of Alaska that may have next to nothing as far as records go anyway (please correct me if I’m wrong here!). I’m just using this as an example of where you can step in and help.

Check out your county (or one you are very familiar with) and log in (easy to create a free account if you don’t already have one). Then add in the information that you know of and spread the word! Share this wiki with others you know are interested, your local society, historical groups, etc. and it will soon be filled with lots of goodies for people researching that area!

The best part of wiki’s to me is the community effort that is involved, and genealogy is a great community that really works on sharing that information. So check out your county and those you are interested in! Spread the word 🙂

Happy hunting!

Tag: familysearch Page 1 of 2

The Family History Guide – Resource for Beginners

Tuesday’s Tip: Indexing with FamilySearch

Tuesday’s Tip on Wednesday: FamilySearch.org

Quick Tip: FamilySearch County Wikis