History and Use of the International Genealogical Index (IGI) -- Part Three

The International Genealogical Index (IGI) was not completely available online until 2012. At that time, it was added to the FamilySearch.org Historical Record Collections. It is easily located by doing a title search from the Historical Record Collections search page. Here is a screenshot showing a search for the IGI.

The IGI search page has selections for searching either the Community Contributed IGI or the Community Indexed IGI or both. If I just select the Community Contributed IGI and do a search for one of my ancestors, here are the results. I will search for my Great-grandfather, Henry Martin Tanner, by entering his name in the search fields as shown below and unchecking the Community Indexed IGI.

Here are the results.

The results here illustrate that entries in the IGI can be duplicated a number of times. The first four results are references to my ancestor. There are also additional references to him down in the list. The FamilySearch search engine also picks up references to "Martin Henry Tanner" who is my cousin and a source of confusion with Henry Martin Tanner, my Great-grandfather. The duplicate entries represent multiple submissions of the same individuals. As a note, the IGI information has been included in the currently available FamilySearch.org Family Tree and the duplicate entries in the Family Tree came, in part, from this initial duplication.

At this point, the real issue is whether or not you can find a reference to the original document that was used to create the IGI entry. The best source for detailed information about the origin, structure, and content of all of the various forms of the IGI is the following book.

Jaussi, Laureen Richardson. Genealogy Fundamentals. Orem, Utah (284 East 400 South, Orem 84058): Jaussi Publications, 1994.

When you click on one of the results from the search illustrated previously, here is a sample of the page you might get.

The entry at the bottom of the page on the left with the arrow pointing is the IGI Film number. This number can be used to find the microfilm record of the "original" IGI microfilm roll. You can search with the numbers in the FamilySearch.org Catalog. Here is a screenshot of the results of such a search.

In this case, these original microfilms are in the Family History Library, Special Collections and have access limited to members with temple recommends and you will likely have some additional research to do with the original microfilm in your search for the source records.

From time to time, you may find one of the following types of entries in the FamilySearch.org Family Tree:

If you see this notice, then you should click on the link to learn more. You will then be taken to the following page:

As you can see, there is a lot of information that goes along with the IGI.

Here is the link to read the previous posts in this series.

http://rejoiceandbeexceedingglad.blogspot.com/2017/02/history-and-use-of-international_3.html
http://rejoiceandbeexceedingglad.blogspot.com/2017/02/history-and-use-of-international.html

History and Use of the International Genealogical Index (IGI) -- Part Two

The International Genealogical Index (IGI) is an index. This means that it is not an "original" source for the information contained in the compilation, but essentially an organized list of records. Since this huge index was first created on the GIANT program, it has since been incorporated into the genealogical database collections called the Historical Record Collections on the FamilySearch.org website. See the web page entitled, "International Genealogical Index (IGI)." The IGI contains 892,761,439 records.

There are two main components of the IGI. The first part is designated as the "Community Contributed IGI" and consists of family information submitted to The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints. Here is a description of the Community Contributed IGI from the FamilySearch.org Research Wiki.

Community Contributed IGI (approximately 430 million names) represents a set of records submitted to the church for which no historical record collection source is known. Some of these records came directly from original sources. For a short period of time duplication in the IGI was reduced by removing records from the indexed data when these records were submitted by the community, but the original collection annotation was lost. The majority of the records may contain data from multiple sources. To do an exhaustive search for your ancestor you should choose to search the Community Contributed IGI from the IGI collection details page and then follow the process outlined on the Family Search Wiki IGI page to determine if the record you find was part of an indexed collection.

The second part is designated as "Community Indexed IGI." Here is a quote concerning the content of this part of the IGI from the IGI Search Page.

The indexed data has been organized into the original collections from which it was transcribed and resides in the Historical Records system. To see a list of all collections available choose Browse All Published Collections from the home screen. The Community Indexed search from this page searches ONLY the records that were part of the old IGI. Most of these collections have had many more records added to them. To do an exhaustive search for your ancestors you should choose to use the search form on the home screen.

Here is another quote from the FamilySearch.org Research Wiki explaining the content of the Community Indexed IGI.

Community Indexed IGI (approximately 460 million names) is a set of records transcribed directly from source material and submitted to the church. The indexed data that was part of the IGI has been organized into its original source collections from which it was transcribed and it now resides in the Historical Records system. The Community Indexed IGI search from the IGI collection details page searches ONLY the indexed records that were part of the old IGI. To do an exhaustive search for your ancestors in all available historical records (over 3 billion names that includes the old indexed IGI records) you should choose to use the search form on the home screen. To see a list of all published collections available choose All Record Collections from the home screen.

 There is a web page in the FamilySearch.org Research Wiki entitled, "International Genealogical Index Coverage," that lists the contents of the IGI by country and by state in the United States as of July 1998. However, index records were added to the IGI through December 2008.

It is important to understand that the IGI has a number of record collections. The indexed entries from the IGI are treated the same as indexed records from any other source and they are published by county or state (parish or county) and organized into the record collections they were transcribed from. Some of the idiosyncrasies of the IGI include the following:

• Burials and death records were not indexed unless they applied to children who died before the age of 8.
• Illegitimate infants who died young were not indexed.
• Many extracted entries have been redacted because FamilySearch does not have permission to publish these records online; these entries can now only be viewed on the microfiche and CD-ROM versions of the IGI.
• In England, entries before 1752 followed no standards for double-year entries dated between January and March.

Before going much further, it is important to realize the limitations of indexes. The entries in the IGI should not be considered completely reliable. Any information obtained from a search of the IGI should be verified by looking in the original sources. 

Here is the link to read the previous post.

http://rejoiceandbeexceedingglad.blogspot.com/2017/02/history-and-use-of-international.html

History and Use of the International Genealogical Index (IGI) -- Part One

An often overlooked part of the FamilySearch.org website is the Search Genealogies section. This section is found under the Search Tab on the website's startup page. Here is a screenshot of the dropdown menu:

These resources have been separated from the Historical Record Collections because they are "compiled or contributed" records. If you have been using the FamilySearch.org Family Tree for a while, you may have seen a source added by FamilySearch that references the IGI. For many years, the IGI was considered to be one of the most valuable resources and finding aids for doing research in England. To understand its present value and use, it is imperative to also understand its origin.

My summary here of the history of the International Genealogical Index is based on the following book:

Allen, James B, Jessie L Embry, and Kahlile B Mehr. Hearts Turned to the Fathers: A History of the Genealogical Society of Utah, 1894-1994. Provo, Utah: BYU Studies, Brigham Young University, 1995.

The IGI has its origins in the attempts made by The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints to record the ordinances performed in their temples. See Gospel Topics: Temples. One of the difficulties encountered in the process of recording these ordinances was the persistent issue of duplication. As early as 1894, the Church recognized the need to keep adequate records and also recognized that there was a problem with ordinances being duplicated in different temples, mostly because of the difficulties involved in communication during these early years. Members living in different geographic areas were doing the same research and submitting the same names to the temples due to this inability to communicate easily or at all.

In 1927 the Church began a centralized index of the temple ordinances performed in the temples, which was ultimately called the Temple Index Bureau or TIB. This index was kept on 3" x 5" cards in file drawers like an old library catalog. There is no real need to review the details of the evolution of the various programs and records created to record the temple ordinances and to avoid duplication. Suffice it to say, that over the years, the problem of detecting and resolving duplicate submissions remained as one of the most perplexing challenges in the record keeping process.

With the advent of computers, the Church began to look at ways to computerize the vast amount of information that had been accumulated. In 1961, the First Presidency of the Church approved using electronic records processing for the first time and by 1962 the move to computerize the records was underway. The task of computerizing the TIB was too overwhelming to consider at that time but at the same time, the Church began the process of extracting names from original, microfilmed records. The original program was called the Records Tabulation program (R-Tab). Although records from other locations were included, most of the records were extracted from British parish registers.

In 1969, the Chuch introduced a comprehensive computer system called GIANT. The program included the records in the Record Tabulation program as well as names manually submitted by the members. Eventually, the master file from the GIANT system was output to microfiche. This huge microfiche-based list was at first called the Computer File Index or CFI. Later compilations from the GIANT system on microfiche, the fourth edition, were called the International Genealogical Index or IGI.

The IGI continued to grow. In 1975 the IGI contained 34 million names. In 1981 the IGI had grown to 81 million names. By 1984 it had 147 million names and in 1992 the total had increased to 187 million names. Because of its focus on British records, it became the most valuable index of British records in existence. In 1988, some of the records were put on CDs and sold to the public. By 1993, the IGI was possibly the largest name indexed record in existence in the entire world.

Quoting from the book Hearts Turned to the Fathers cited previously on pages 318 - 319, by 1992 the IGI contained the following classes of records:

The 1992 edition of the IGI on microfiche was totally new product including 187 million names, not only from the Mass File in GIANT (162.5 million) but also from other ordinance files: pre-1970 temple records created by the Family Record Extraction Program (17.5 million), records from the Family Entry System (4.5 million) and Completed Ordinance File records created by the Ordinance Recording System (2.5 million). 

When new.FamilySearch.org was created prior to its staged introduction across the Church, the developers included the IGI as part of the records included in the program. This same huge database was then carried over to the currently used FamilySearch.org Family Tree program. Some users of the Family Tree will see source references to the IGI in their source listings for ancestors in the Family Tree.

Stay tuned for the next installment of this post.

Data Problems in the FamilySearch Family Tree

Apparently, reality has escaped some of the genealogical researchers over the years. This is a rather common slice of the data still to be corrected on the FamilySearch.org Family Tree. Here is an example of one of those bright red Data Problem Icons.

I can only wonder what the person who entered this information was thinking (or not thinking). Chronology was not a strong point among our ancestors who were doing "the work for their kindred dead." As a matter of fact, kindred was not a strong point either.  Here are a couple of entries from this same section of the Family Tree:

Maybe you thought the "living dead" (zombies) were a new phenomena. It looks like some of my ancestors fell into this category. All this would be passably amusing were it not for the fact that this mess represents a huge amount of work cleaning up the lines before I even get to these problems. By the way, I found all this in about three seconds of clicking back on a randomly chosen ancestral line. I didn't have to guess very much to choose which line to search.

In case no one has told you, these red icons mean serious problems. They are not there to add festive color to your section of the Family Tree. Any attempt at "fixing" these problems needs to begin many generations earlier than this particular level. You cannot, under any circumstances, begin to "fix" this mess without carefully working through each of your lines beginning with someone who has been carefully documented and can act as a firm anchor for moving back generation by generation.

The worst part of the mess illustrated above is that unsophisticated users of the program of all ages but primarily youth, are encouraged to "look for the green icons" without qualification. Here is a screenshot of the same section of the Family Trees showing a green temple icon in the middle all this mess.

Fortunately, in this case, clicking on the green icon shows the following message:

The red icons do not even begin to indicate all of the data problems that exist in this section of the Family Tree. Just in case you are not aware of the resources already available that address these issues, here is a link to the page outlining the data problems addressed by the red icons:

Fixing Data Problems in Family Tree

I thought it might be a good idea to copy the list of data problems identified by the red icons. The list below comes from the page linked above. The list is in a table with three columns. The first is the name of the data problem as it appears when you click on the icon. The second is a brief description and the third is a yes or no indicating whether or not the issue can be ignored because of special circumstances. 

Data Problems

• Birth after Father's Death: The birth year of the child is later than the death year of the father. No
• Birth after Mother's Child-Bearing Years: The birth year of the child is after the mother turned 52, which is normally the end of child-bearing years. Yes
• Birth after Mother's Death: The birth year of the child is later than the death year of the mother. No
• Birth before Father Could Have Children: The birth year of the child is before the father was 12 years of age. No
• Birth before Mother Could Have Children" The birth year of the child is before the mother was 12 years of age. Yes
• Born after Married: The birth year of the person is after the marriage year. No
• Born after Spouse's Death: The birth year of the person is after the death year of the spouse. No
• Child Born before Father: The birth year of the child is before the birth year of the father. No
• Child Born before Mother: The birth year of the child is before the birth year of the mother. No
• Child Death before Father: The death year of the child is before the birth year of the father. No
• Child Death before Mother: The death year of the child is before the birth year of the mother. No
• Death before Birth Year :The death year of the person is before the birth year. No
• Death before Spouse Was Born: The death year of the person is before the birth year of the spouse. No
• Death Year before Marriage: The death year of the person is before the marriage year. No
• Died Too Young for Marriage or Children: The person has marriage or children information, but the death year shows the person as 8 years of age or younger. Yes
• Male or Female Is Required: You must specify the sex of this person. No
• Looping Pedigree: This person has a child who is also listed as a parent. See Solving a pedigree looping problem in Family Tree (56206). No
• Married before 12 Years Old: The marriage year for one spouse shows the person was less than 12 years of age at the time of marriage. Yes
• Missing Standardized Event Date or Place: A date or place for an event, such as birth, marriage, or death, is not standardized. See Entering standardized dates and places (71996). To recommend additions to the standardized place list, see Recommending an addition to standardized places (53683). No
• Person over 120 Years Old: The death year is more than 120 years after the birth year. No
• Possible Duplicate Child: Information about 2 or more children is similar:
• Name is the same.
• Birth year is the same or missing.
• Death year is the same or missing.
• Living status is the same. See Finding and merging possible duplicate records in Family Tree (53952). Yes
• Possible Duplicate Spouse: Information about 2 or more spouses is similar:
• Name is the same.
• Birth year is the same or missing.
• Death year is the same or missing.
• Living status is the same. See Finding and merging possible duplicate records in Family Tree (53952). No

Watch RootsTech 2017 Keynotes Live on RootsTech.org

For the first time ever, keynote speakers from all RootsTech sessions, including Wednesday’s Innovator Summit, will be streamed live online at rootstech.org. Here is the latest edition of the keynote speaker lineup.

Steve Rockwood, CEO of FamilySearch International 

Rockwood currently serves as president and CEO of FamilySearch International. Over the past two years, he has made it his mission to emphasize the personal side of family history work, inspiring people to focus on the stories of ancestors and encouraging the use of technology to make records, photos, and memories more accessible. 

You can watch Steve Rockwood’s remarks on Wednesday, February 8, from 9 to 10 a.m. MST and Thursday, February 8, from 9 to 10 a.m. MST. 

Liz Wiseman, author and business leader 

Wiseman, a best-selling author, teaches leadership strategies to executives and emerging leaders around the world. She is a frequent lecturer at BYU, the Naval Postgraduate School, and Stanford University. 

You can watch Liz Wiseman’s remarks on Wednesday, February 8, from 9 to 10 a.m. MST. 

The Scott Brothers 

Drew and Jonathan Scott, more commonly known as the Property Brothers from the popular HGTV show, have built an impressive entertainment empire by working together in film, entertainment, and home renovation. At RootsTech, they’ll share stories from their past and explain why their family heritage is an important part of their lives. 

Watch the Scott Brothers’ remarks on Thursday, February 9, from 8:30 to 10 a.m. MST.
Learn more about the Scott Brothers. 

LeVar Burton 

Award-winning actor, producer, and director, LeVar Burton will be the keynote speaker on Friday, February 10. Burton burst on to the acting stage with his role as Kunta Kinte in ABC’s 1977 award-winning television series Roots. He is also widely recognized as the host and executive producer of Reading Rainbow. Burton also appeared in Star Trek: The Next Generationas he took the role of Lieutenant Geordi La Forge. 

Watch LeVar Burton’s remarks on Friday, February 10, from 8:30 a.m. to 10 a.m. MST.
Learn more about LeVar Burton. 

Buddy Valastro 

More commonly known as the Cake Boss from the hit TLC television show, Buddy Valastro will be the keynote speaker on Saturday, February 11. At RootsTech, Buddy will share why mixing eggs, sugar, and butter means a lot more than “making a cake.” 

Watch Buddy Valastro’s remarks on Saturday, February 11, from 8:30 a.m. to 10 a.m. MST.
Learn more about Buddy Valastro. 

CeCe Moore 

CeCe Moore is a genetic genealogist that uses DNA to uncover hidden truths about family relationships. Her work has been used to help adoptees reunite with their biological families. 

Watch CeCe Moore’s remarks on Saturday, February 11, from 8:30 a.m. to 10 a.m. MST.

An Explosion of Memories

I am still encountering a significant number of people, even members of The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints, who have yet to even view their Memories section on FamilySearch.org. I recently went to my own Memories section and counted the number of people with memories added. There are approximately 425+ individuals when I view "All" in the People section of Memories with thousands of uploaded files.

Now, before going on, I need to mention that detailed instructions for gathering, preserving and adding photos, documents, stories and audio files to the Memories section of FamilySearch.org are available on The Family History Guide Project #2 for Memories. The Family History Guide is a free, sequenced and structured educational tool now linked directly from LDS.org as the instructional choice.

I have found one of the fastest and most effective ways to get people engaged in family history is to show them their own Memories section. If by chance, the person has no family members that have uploaded photos, documents, stories or audio files, then you can show them what could happen if they become involved in the FamilySearch.org program by showing them a few of your own uploaded files or those uploaded by your own family.

We have been using the Memories section recently for serious research while helping patrons at the BYU Family History Library and friends to try and solve some family mysteries. I am encouraging everyone to upload their scanned photos and more importantly their documents to the Memories section and then they do not have to bring paper copies with them when we begin doing some research into their families. With the documents attached and tagged to each person in the Family Tree, we can refer to the documents instantly and not have to dig through piles or old notebooks.

What is amazing is the number of Memories that are being accumulated on FamilySearch.org. According to statistics published by FamilySearch, there have been 14.89 million photos uploaded as of the date of this post. There are also an additional 1.1 million stories and over 703 million sources added to the Family Tree.

Family History on LDS.org

The Families and Individuals tab on LDS.org has a wealth of resources about genealogy and family history. Here is a screenshot of the tab.

 

The screenshot at the beginning of this post above is the Family History page from the link at the bottom of the column entitled "Eternal Families." Here are the selections from the Family History webpage.

Each of these selections links to other valuable resources either on the LDS.org website, the FamilySearch.org website or The Family History Guide website. For example, there is a link from the "My Family History Calling" selection with training for Family History Consultants. There is even a selection for how to teach a Sunday Family History Lesson.

I suggest clicking around on all the options for an overview of many of the resources available.