Learn from BYU's Family History Lab

It has been some time since I reviewed the genealogical resources available through Brigham Young University. For some time now, BYU has provided a free full-blown university level course on genealogy called Religion 261. The online course comes complete with a Student Manual, Supplemental Readings and a U.S. Census Tutorial. Obviously, this course is designed for full-time students at BYU, but the benefit we have as outsiders is that the course contents are freely available online. The sections of the class are as follows:

• 1 - RootsMagic
• 2 - Family Tree
• 3 - FamilySearch.org
• 4 - Large Databases
• 5 - Topic Specific Websites
• 6 - Temple Policies and Indexing
• Appendix
• The Five-Step Research Process

Of course, reviewing this course got me poking around a little more on the BYU website. Of course, there are all the resources linked on the BYU Family History Library website. 

I just finished writing a blog post for Genealogy's Star about the BYU Family History Technology Lab. But there are a lot more resources available if you are persistent in searching. For example, there is the Center for Family History and Genealogy. 

The current projects include the following:

• Nauvoo Community Project
• Immigrant Ancestor Project
• Bertram Merrell's Index of English Marriages
• Script Tutorials
• Discovering English Ancestors
• Welsh Mormon History
• Family History Companion

Each of these resources are remarkable. Together, they are more than remarkable.

Oh, did you know that the BYU Family History Library has a YouTube Channel? That should give you a heads up on what might be available if you keeping digging around on the Web for genealogy. 

Is Your Stake Prepared for the New Indexing Program?

FamilySearch is in the process of developing a new Indexing Program that will be completely online. There have been a number of FamilySearch blog posts on the upcoming program. Here are links to some of the blogs that talk about the introduction of the program and its features:

• Peer to Peer: Preparing Your Stake for the New Indexing Program
• The Future of Indexing
• Looking Back, Looking Forward
• Tablet Support and the New Learning Experience
• The New Indexing Program: Great for Stake Indexing Directors
• The New Indexing Program: Even more features to look forward to

The first post on this list explains that stake indexing directors can help the stake members be prepared for the new indexing program by laying a foundation for change over the coming months. This foundation will help them be ready when it’s time to make the transition to the new program. Change is not easy for any of us, and the actions that you take now will help things go more smoothly in the future.

In the coming weeks, stake indexing directors will have access to the beta (test) program so that they can explore how it works and test its features. That is one of the best ways they can begin preparing for the new program. The post entitled "Peer to Peer: Preparing Your Stake for the New Indexing Program" will give you a few suggestions explaining what some stakes are doing to get ready for the transition. If you are reading this post and are not in the indexing program, I would suggest you may want to pass this along to one of your indexing friends or the stake director.

LDS Faith Exhibit Online

Historical documents are basic to genealogical research. Any efforts made to make historically important documents more available should be encouraged. You may not consider this exhibit to be genealogically significant, but I can assure you that it is. I have personally met or know people who are descendants of the individuals who are recorded in these documents or actually participated in their creation. These particular documents are just the tiniest tip of the huge documentary iceberg of similar documents, including personal journals, histories and other types of records, maintained in the Church History Library and other repositories.

If you cannot travel to Salt Lake City, Utah to see the documents in person, there is a website with digitized copies of the exhibit on LDS.org. Here is the link to the Foundations of Faith Exhibit. Many of these early documents are also being digitized and put online in The Joseph Smith Papers project. The Project includes brief biographical sketches of all of the people mentioned in the Joseph Smith Papers, including this biographical sketch of my own 3rd Great-Grandfather:

Tanner, John
Biography
15 Aug. 17781–13 Apr. 1850.2 Farmer, timberland owner.3 Born at Hopkinton, Washington Co., Rhode Island.4 Son of Joshua Tanner and Thankful Tefft.5 Moved to Greenwich, Washington Co., New York, ca. 1791.6 Married first Tabitha Bentley, 1800.7 Wife died, Apr. 1801.8 Married second Lydia Stewart, fall 1801.9 Moved to Northwest Bay (near Bolton), Warren Co., New York, 1818.10 Moved to Bolton Landing, Warren Co., 1823.11 Wife died, 1825.12 Married third Elizabeth Beswick, 1825.13 Baptized into LDS church, 17 Sept. 1832, at Bolton Landing.14 Ordained a priest by Orson Pratt, 2 Feb. 1833, at Bolton.15 Moved to Kirtland, Geauga Co., Ohio, Dec. 1834.16 Loaned and donated substantial monies to JS and church.17 Left Kirtland for Far West, Caldwell Co., Missouri, 1838.18 Severely beaten during conflict between Latter-day Saints and other Missourians, fall 1838.19 Moved to New Liberty, Pope Co., Illinois, Mar.–Apr. 1839.20 Located near Montrose, Lee Co., Iowa Territory, Mar. 1840.21 Materially assisted in building of temple in Nauvoo, Hancock Co., Illinois.22 Served mission to New York, 1844.23 Ordained a high priest, by Dec. 1845.24 Moved to what became Council Bluffs, Pottawattamie Co., Iowa Territory, spring 1846.25 Moved to Salt Lake Valley, 1848.26 Died at South Cottonwood, Salt Lake Valley.27

The links are to the website and by going to the Reference section, you can see where each of the facts was obtained.

Ancestry.com class from the BYU Family History Library

During the past few weeks, I have been teaching a class at the Brigham Young University (BYU) Family History Library. During one of the class sessions the coordinators of the Library videoed the presentation. I don't know how much you can see or hear, but it is in three segments as follows:

Ancestry - Part 1: http://youtu.be/ubkKhbB-EVY
Ancestry - Part 2: http://youtu.be/vsPCmdRYZUw
Ancestry - Part 3: http://youtu.be/cS5SvLJ4-Rw

I will be teaching the class for the last time on Saturday, 6 September 2014 at 10:00 am. You are welcome to come, if you are within traveling distance of the BYU campus. Visitor parking is in the Art Museum Parking Lot for free.

High Powered Youth Involvement in Family History

A success story about involving youth in family history is big news. The Mesa, Arizona FamilySearch Library has developed a very successful program they call the 4K Program. The idea of this program is not just to challenge the youth to "take a name to the Temple," but to give them the research tools and perspective necessary to accomplish the goal. As the program is described by one of the Mesa FamilySearch Library Missionaries, Polly Munden: 

The classes are designed to teach "Basic" correct family research skills to youth.  They are designed to be given once each week for 4 weeks, wherein we teach 4 databases, using 4 topics, thus the 4K Race to the finish, it is all about completing the training.  We add motivational and inspiration snipits and provide plenty of help to be sure youth have success but most importantly, correct.  We never go out and look for names, rather the youth are instructed to use an "Existing Ancestor" in the 1850 timeframe and the youth inevitably do find ancestors.  If this happens, they spend the next three weeks documenting and sourcing different records to their ancestors.  We ask that they not put on the temple ordinance list until the last class after it is properly documented.  We focus on cleaning up the tree and that Wards have a plan in place when they complete the class. 

We just recently had the Queen Creek Arizona North Stake, brining in 4 youth from all 14 wards.  The Stake youth graduated last week with the highest attendance ever in one month, and the Stake has gone out to a charter school in their district and will now have the youth assist with the training other youth in their respective wards along with the Family History Consultants.  I know there has been many questions about youth teaching, etc., but the program works, the youth are doing magnificent, have much more to learn thus the importance of Wards having a plan in place.  We are anxious to share our program with others and I will be contacting FamilySearch.

Quoting from the Introduction Document:

PREPARING YOUTH FOR THE 4K RACE TO THE FINISH CLASS“YOUTH FAMILY HISTORY CONSULTANT” The following is a list of basic instructions to prepare your youth for the 4K Class.
 1.     Classes are taught once a week for four consecutive weeks, meaning they take commitment.
 2.     Prior to class, whether coming to the Mesa AZ FamilySearch Library or holding the classes in your own ward, all youth will need to have their user name and passwords in place.
 ·      Assign a specific person to see that this activity is complete prior to class.  We suggest you do a trial run, and have each youth log in.
·      Prepare a list of all user names and passwords for each youth.  Have the list in each class and destroy after the last class.
 3.     Youth receive a “Certificate of Completion” for the Youth Family History Consultant Class at the Library, however, you may decide if and what incentive you would like to offer the youth.  At the Library the youth must complete the following requirements to receive the certificate:
 ·       Must attend all four classes.
·      Use their research log and skill review in each class.
·      There are no makeup classes.
 4.     In the classroom, we research with an existing ancestor.  We ask that the youth have a 3-4-pedigree chart in place.  Please help your youth with this.  If your setting up a new account it is usually inputting of their name, parents and grandparents and then they tie into the family line.
 5.     Selected youth will be asked to do a demonstration at the beginning of classes two through four.
 ·      Prior to the end of each class the instructor will speak with the youth leader as to potential youth to give the skill demonstrations.
·      The skill review demonstrations by the youth will come from the Leland Moon series.  You can find his “Most Popular Course” in FamilySearch.  (We will help them with this.)
·      Click on Get Help in Family Search
·      Go to Learning Center
·      Navigate down to Most Popular Courses
·      Click on this icon and you will be viewing the Leland Moon’s classes.
·      Youth can select any class they wish to demonstrate from these lessons. Which discusses a topic they learned in the class.
 6.       Wards are asked to bring their Family History Consultants to assist.
·      Consultants will view the class instruction and then assist the youth in their research.
·      The Library will also provide missionaries to assist the youth.
 THESE CLASSES ARE FUN. THE YOUTH WILL LEARN RESEARCH SKILLS AND MANY WILL EXPERIENCE SUCCESS AND HAVE THE ABILITY TO DO THEIR OWN FAMILY RESEARCH.

These classes can be organized on this pattern in any Ward or Stake. It is important, however, to have adequately trained and qualified adult supervision. Those teaching these classes need to be qualified to do what they are trying to teach.

This program has been being developed by the Mesa FamilySearch Library for many months and a number of groups of youth have taken this course with success.

Finding FamilySearch Certified Products

From time to time, FamilySearch.org adds to or changes their list of Certified Products. These are products that interact, to some degree or another, with FamilySearch.org's Family Tree program. The format of the list of Certified Programs has been changing dramatically over the past few months but the location of the list has remained the same. There is a link on the FamilySearch.org start up page, down at the bottom of the page. The link is the word "About." If you scroll to the bottom of the page you will see the following, shown in this screenshot:

Most of the graphics on the Startup (Home) page are context sensitive. That means the photos and such that show on my page will be different than those shown on your page, but the links will be the same.

Clicking on the link takes you to another page. Here is a screenshot showing the link to the Products page:

You might want to explore some of the other links also. Clicking on the Products Page link finally brings you to the page as shown below:

You can also get to this same page by typing in https://familysearch.org/products/  .

I am not sure what they mean by "More Family History Products" since this is the only list I am aware of, but that is the name of the page. There are several tabs at the top of the lists:

• Web
• Windows
• Mac OS X
• Mobile

These tabs separate out the programs into general categories. Clicking on the icon for any one of the programs will give you a page describing a specific program. For example, by clicking on the icon for Ancestral Quest, I get the following page:

I do not normally do software reviews. If you would like to see a good place to see such reviews, I suggest GenSoftReviews.com. 

If you click around on the tab links and look at all of the pages, you will see that there are, at the time of this post, about 43 programs, although the number changes frequently. Some of these programs are highly specialized and only work with a particular hardware product, such as the scanning utilities for ScanPro, ST ViewScan Premium and Kodak WebUploader. 

There are different levels of certification such as Tree Share, Sources, Discussions, Change History, LDS Features. There used to be an explanation of these different levels of Certification, but that explanation has disappeared from the website. These are commercial programs and although some of the Web apps are free, they may only work with their companion program. You need to examine the descriptions of the products and click on the links to the product websites to see a full explanation of what each of the programs will do. Support for these programs, if there is any, is not provided by FamilySearch. Support is provided by the individual developers.

A Blog Index?

I received the following comment from a reader:

I realize that many people ask you the same questions over & over and reading your blogs would help minimize this problem.  Perhaps, you have a blog index which I should have checked and might have prevented my asking you this "cousin" question.  I will make a dedicated effort not to make these question emails to you a common occurrence.  Ha!  But questions do come up!. Hopefully, you will slow down a little so that you will be around a little longer.

I presently have written 3374 posts on Genealogy's Star and 343 posts on this blog. I am not sure how I would go about creating a workable index. Fortunately I don't really have to create one. All of my blogs are entirely indexed and searchable by Google. If you want to see if I have written on any topic or you want to find a topic you remember, just do a Google search and include either the name of the blog or my name. If you include the name of the blog or whatever, you should use the following method of searching including inserting the quotation marks:

familysearch indexing "james tanner"

The spaces are automatically assumed by Google Search to be "+" signs so a search will look for all three terms, including the complete name, in any website. Here is a screenshot showing the results of such a search:

The references to this blog start about 2/3 the way down the page. The results are presented with the most commonly clicked on websites at the beginning of the list. You might have to try a few different searches before you get the hang of this type of search, but most topics should show up in the first page of results.