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I recently had a long conversation with a friend about finding names for temple ordinances on the FamilySearch.org Family Tree. The conversation centered around the relatively new Ordinances Ready app. My friend had been talking to one of her friends who was a genealogical researcher. The friend of my friend had abandoned research and was focusing on submitting a thousand names a month to the temples using the Ordinances Ready app and other similar programs. My friend's concerns were that many of the names being submitted were likely duplicates.
In an age of self-driving cars and automated record hints from FamilySearch.org and other websites, there is a serious issue as to whether or not genealogical research skills are still necessary. This particular post uses the premises explored in my recent Genealogy's Star blog post entitled, "Will Computer Programs Replace Genealogists?" My conclusion is that genealogists will shortly find themselves in the same position as people who manufactured wagon wheels back in the 1890s. Granted, today there are still people manufacturing wagon wheels but the need for those people is so marginal as to be almost nonexistent. Genealogy may soon become a "folk craft" practiced by those people who insist on doing things manually.
I often say that the Family Tree is the solution rather than the problem. The reason it is the solution is that it creates an environment where each individual who has ever lived on the earth has a unique position. The implications of this are so far-reaching that most of the users of the Family Tree miss the point of the program. Presently, of course, the technology has yet to progress to the point where the Family Tree can automate the process of adding verified sources and correcting information that is already in the Family Tree. But that technology is steadily developing.
Recent promotions by FamilySearch have focused upon the concept of "finding a name" to take to the temple. The Ordinances Ready app obviates the need for this process. My current experience with the Ordinances Ready app Indicates that the accuracy is much higher than previously experienced with the ordinance crawler type programs. I am also certain that the accuracy of the program will increase over time. Presently, individuals can find a relative's name using the app.
If genealogists complain about the accuracy of the program there is a Catch 22 problem. If you claim that the information in the family tree is "inaccurate" then as a genealogist you are admitting that you have either not corrected the information or that you don't actually know whether it is correct or not. Of course, a careful "genealogist" would research the names before submission and verify the accuracy and the relationship. But users always have the option of refusing to accept the suggested individuals. I can simply cancel the proffered individuals. In essence, the program is providing "real genealogists" with an error detecting system. In other words, if the suggested names from the Ordinances Ready app show relationship and you do not think that it is a valid relationship then you then have the obligation or perhaps option to "do the research" and correct the entries. If you choose not to make the corrections how can you claim that people shouldn't use the programs? This question goes to an issue that I commonly encounter from genealogists that they do not want to "waste their time" correcting the Family Tree.
Will this is put genealogists out of business? Ultimately yes, as I explained in my other post cited above, I've come to the conclusion that eventually the concept of doing "genealogical research" will collapse.
Years ago, when missionaries for The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints were called to travel to other countries from the United States, they walked or rode in wagons. Today they ride buses, trains, and airplanes. Technology will undoubtedly affect many of the entrenched traditions that we have in the Church today. Some genealogists are like those who would advocate that missionaries should walk because that is the way it was done originally. Whether we embrace the new technology or reject it depends on our personal choices.
There is one major flaw in the idea of using ordinance crawling programs to find temple names. This activity does not produce new names that have not been previously added to the Family Tree. Presently, those of us who are actively doing research and adding names to the Family Tree (genealogists) are the primary source for this additional information. However, Record Hints and other similar technologies are accelerating the process of doing research. Eventually, those same technologies may completely replace the need for research. It is my own personal observation that many diligent researchers fail to use the technology that is already available.
Meanwhile, those dedicated genealogists who are diligently doing research and adding names to the Family Tree need to realize that many of their functions are being replaced by technological advances. As with any technological displacement, there are those who will reject the changes out of hand. To quote Yoda, "You must unlearn what you have learned." Quoting another statement from Yoda, "Many of the truths that we cling to depend on our point of view."
For those of us who are not of the Mormon faith, we have entirely different reasons for doing research. I would never just randomly accept anything from someone else's tree or a One World type of tree. I love the process of research. The hunt, the finds, the making stories of the lives of my ancestors. They are way more than names to me. (I’m not saying they are just names to you or anyone else) I’ll continue to build "my own" tree and connect with cousins. Adding DNA to our tool box has also been wonderful. Happy hunting.
ReplyDeleteI certainly agree, but I assume you use the internet and online resources to add to your search. Genealogy is much more than building a pedigree, but those of us who expand the limits of pedigrees are few and far between.
DeleteJames, my experience has been that automated record hints currently only help reconstruct families that appear in vital records and census records after about 1850 in England and the United States. They can help reconstruct families earlier in New England. In the Southern United States, about all they can do before 1850 is connect you to a Find A Grave profile, which is often inaccurate and not based on a tombstone inscription. To accurately reconstruct families in England before the 1841 census, indexing would have to go back and reindex fields they omitted like specific places of residence, and occupations, in order to separate the five John and Mary Smith families who were having children at the same time in the same parish. It will also be necessary to make abstracts of probate records, extracting them in family groups, making it possible for hinting to match up the same people listed in one will as the same people listed in another will.
ReplyDeleteFor medieval research, apart from nobility and royalty, I haven't seen any companies make a serious attempt to create record hinting. Many of the records, like manorial records for England, are only available to access in a physical archive. I guess many of the companies don't ever expect to have many customers who can get that far back.
There has been very little attempt to gather, digitize, or index medieval records in Continental Europe, so it's not possible to get automated hints to any of those records. I think the Latter-day Saints are just hoping for the Second Coming to come first before they would need to focus on anything of this magnitude.
For Scandinavian research, I've heard that the automated matching merged most people with others of the same name who are actually different people.
In Welsh research, the switch from patronymic to fixed hereditary surnames was arbitrarily set by indexers at a specific year, when in fact it varied from village to village over a wide span of years. In an entry that says John son of John Davis was baptized, should the child's name be indexed "John Davis" or "John Johns." The indexers made a decision that before x year, it should be Davis and after x year, if should be Johns, etc. I don't know how hinting could unscramble this mess.
I did a big study for one of the companies to show that it wasn't possible to keep New England's Great Migration immigrants straightened out without moderation by skilled genealogists. The relationships in these families are constantly being edited in the wrong direction. Such moderation is not put into place because it scares off beginners "if a scholar immediately changes your edit when you make your first edit to a Wiki."
Accuracy has always suffered due to demands for production. Despite some organizations stating that professional genealogists are unnecessary, other companies are currently increasing the number of genealogists they employ. My question would be - why would they do that?
I remember reading predictions that one of the careers most at risk of being replaced by AI are ministers.
ReplyDeleteThere are so many errors in researching in areas where the local population has similar names.
ReplyDeleteIt is generally impossible to find immigrants without looking at it from an analytical point of view. One record might list the parents (whose names could be misspelled), another might give an indication of birth year, another tombstone might have the birthdate but the wrong year, another source might say a county in... let's say, Sweden. Or it might list a region which is only known colloquially. It takes a human brain to piece that together.
Honestly, there are so many people who are naive and do not know how to analyze, source, and find accuracy that FamilyTree (while a good idea in theory) is a bit of a mess... someone might spend months fixing a problem only to have someone re-merge the wrong information coming from a Mormon pioneer history.
If I had a dime for every family line I've had to fix, I'd have my house paid off.
I do not think genealogists are going away. You're under the naive impression that hints will always work. The FHL has somewhere around 2% of the genealogical records out there. There is NO WAY that FamilySearch will ever get all the records of the world, nor will they be able to index them all. That takes time, energy and money. The LDS Church doesn't have unlimited funds.
Your article is your opinion. As a genealogist, I'm not worried.