New Video from FamilySearch on correcting data

FamilySearch.org has uploaded yet another valuable video its YouTube Channel. 

Roger Bell - How to correct errors in the data

When a mistake is found in the data, there is now a way to contact the contributor who made the mistake and have them correct it. The messaging feature is safe, doesn't share email addresses, and is the simplest way to communicate errors to other patrons.

If you haven't figured it out, much of the valuable instruction in the world is going to webinars and videos. Most of the online genealogy companies now have their own YouTube channels. Go to YouTube.com and search in YouTube for the name of the company and you will see what I mean. 

Changes in "free" programs for the Family History Center Portals

FamilySearch recently announced the following:

Occasionally, FamilySearch finds it necessary to renegotiate subscription contracts. As a result of a recent contract review, ProQuest Historic Map Works will no longer be accessible on the Family History Center portal. We understand that some of you would like other ideas for map resources. You may find access to many free online map databases on the FamilySearch Research Wiki.

In this case, there is a more complex reason for the change. ProQuest.com is a large data supplier to libraries around the world. It is a commercial venture. Here is a description of the company's offerings from their website's article entitled, "Who We Are."

ProQuest is a key partner for content holders of all types, preserving and enabling access to their rich and varied information. Those partnerships have built a growing content collection that now encompasses 90,000 authoritative sources, 6 billion digital pages and spans six centuries. It includes the world’s largest collection of dissertations and theses; 20 million pages and three centuries of global, national, regional and specialty newspapers; more than 450,000 ebooks; rich aggregated collections of the world’s most important scholarly journals and periodicals; and unique vaults of digitized historical collections from great libraries and museums, as well as organizations as varied as the Royal Archives, the Associated Press and the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People.

ProQuest is one of many big information companies. The terms and conditions of their offerings change from time to time as do the contents of their collections. The particular product mentioned in this notice from FamilySearch is called the "Historic Map Works™ Library Edition." In this case, the Historic Map Works program is a separate entity. They have their own terms and conditions of use. Here is what Historic Map Works which is part of the Historic Map Works Residential Genealogy tm LLC has to say:

WWW.HISTORICMAPWORKS.COM may only be used for personal use. Any access to WWW.HISTORICMAPWORKS.COM by an organization, a governmental body, an educational institution, for-profit or non-profit institutions, or other non-individual entities is not permitted and is a violation of these terms and conditions. Non-personal access to Historic Map Work's collections is only permitted via Historic Map Works Library Edition TM which is distributed by our partner ProQuest who can be contacted at http://www.proquest.com/promos/product/hmw08.shtml.

All of this and much more is contained in the HISTORICMAPWORKS.COM TERMS OF SERVICELast updated on June 27th 2006.

Of course, I have no idea what precipitated the termination of the subscription maintained by FamilySearch, but it is easy to see that such arrangements will change from time to time as the rates charged change and as the entities re-define their offerings and the way they provide their services. On the Historic Map Works website, you can buy a print of a map or pay for a download. 

From my standpoint, they are selling a lot of public domain content. Many of the maps are available for free from other websites. Before paying for old, out-of-copyright copies of any document, map or whatever, I suggest doing an online search to see if it is already available for free. I am not a fan of companies or institutions that sell watermarked copies of public domain documents as if they "owned" the content. 

Working on Merging the Impossible in the FamilySearch Family Tree

As I work on my ancestral lines on the FamilySearch.org Family Tree, I am finding that the further I go back on my family lines, the more duplicates there are. As I think about it, this is logical because for any given ancestor, the number of potential descendants increases over time. With more descendants there is a potential for multiple copies of the ancestors to be created. What is somewhat discouraging is that as I work at "cleaning up" the data and entries in the Family Tree, more and more duplicates emerge.

The most difficult challenges involve entries that seem to be potential duplicates but contain little or no distinguishing information. Mr. and Mrs. Jones may be a duplicate of your ancestors but without enough information to properly make the match, you have to pass them by as "Not a Match."

One notable thing about spending a lot of my time involved with helping others with their genealogy is the extremely small impact a monumental change such as the upgrade of the FamilySearch.org website has on most of the people. I am not talking about those who have no interest in genealogy. I mean the volunteers and missionaries at the Brigham Young University Family History Library. This observation is not a criticism, I merely observed that very, very few of the people I talked to last night at the library were even interested in the change over enough to look at the program.

Part of the challenge of working through the duplicates and conflicting information on the Family Tree is that relatively few people are actually working on correcting the entries. For example, I am watching 126 people right now. I find that 21 of those on my watch list have been "deleted," probably through merges. But on any given report from FamilySearch on the changes, I have made the vast majority of all the changes.

What happens as I do research into any given family line is that by adding sources and correcting the information displayed in the Family Tree, such as standardizing dates and places, the results produced are more potential duplicates. The piles of things to do just got bigger.

How do we approach this potential task? Well, we can ignore it like most of our relatives or we can start digging in and making the corrections, doing the merges and cleaning up the entries. I suggest methodically working your way back through your ancestral lines, just as you would systematically weed a garden or water your plants. I have been saying for years that I would be working on the Tanner line once the Family Tree program was fixed and now I have started. Of course, the Tanner line contains Parkinsons, Stapleys, Bryants, Shepherds, Stewarts, Rays and huge number of additional lines so it will probably take me a while to get around to all of them.

Update to FamilySearch Family Tree imposes New Data Limits

The problem of duplicate entries in the FamilySearch.org Family Tree that cannot be merged has not entirely disappeared. The upgrade to the program has imposed some data limits. In the case above, the person has more than 200 sources. Apparently, there is now a limit on the number of sources that can be added. I had not come anywhere close to the 200 source limit but this person was (is?) and IOUS and it seems like there will still be a legacy of limits imposed.

The solution is simple, detach the duplicate or unneeded sources.

FamilySearch up, fixed and running

June 27, 2016 is really an historic day in the operation of the FamilySearch.org website. Although there are a number of residual issues, the main block to a few of us out here in progressing with entering corrected data into the Family Tree has been removed. We are free at last.

Thanks to all the engineers and those who worked on the Family Tree. Good job. Of course, now we expect some of the other detail problems to be resolved also. It never ends. But this is a wonderful beginning.

The End of New.FamilySearch.org?

For many years now I have been anticipating the end of new.FamilySearch.org. This is not an issue like the end of Personal Ancestral File, where the program just keeps going on and on in the background. The end of new.FamilySearch.org means that FamilySearch has finally resolved several serious, limiting issues with the Family Tree program that keep me, personally, from working with a high percentage of my ancestral lines. The long awaited day has supposedly arrived. It is now about 5:30 am on June 27th, 2016 and the FamilySearch.org website is "down for maintenance." It was widely rumored that the scheduled maintenance would result in the separation of the FamilySearch.org Family Tree program from new.FamilySearch.org and the resolution of the long-standing limitations on the Family Tree program.

Now, many (hopefully all) of my readers know that I maintain three blogs. My other, older and more popular blog is Genealogy's Star. On this day, I am going to carry on my observations about the FamilySearch.org website on Genealogy's Star. So switch over and check out what is going on. I don't want to keep switching back and forth and repeating myself.

Link to Genealogy's Star.

Anticipating the other shoe to drop

Early next morning, June 27, 2016, FamilySearch.org will be down for a period of time, perhaps as long as 24 hours. Taking down a hugely popular website is not done lightly. I suspect that there will be some noticeable changes. In any event, one way or another, I will be monitoring the event and reporting on any perceived changes. I did receive the following notice from FamilySearch.org which only heightens my curiosity.

There have been quite a few comments, some showing that the commentators have no idea about what the Family Tree is or why there might be a need for an "upgrade." One thing I do hope is that the speed of the program improves, especially on Sunday afternoons on Utah time.