The FamilySearch Catalog, WorldCat and ArchiveGrid -- Part Two

How to use the FamilySearch.org Catalog

When is a catalog more than a catalog? The answer: when it is the FamilySearch.org Catalog. Obviously, the first use of any library catalog is to look up items that are in the library's holdings. But the FamilySearch.org Catalog is so much more.

Genealogists and family historians have as their main activity looking for and documenting their ancestors. So the Catalog needs to be a finding aid. This is more than merely looking to see what is in the Family History Library and other Libraries, in assisting in this way the Catalog becomes an integral part of the research process. If this type of use of the Catalog doesn't occur to you as being obvious, then perhaps you need to view the Catalog in a new way. Let's go through the processes and see how this works.

If I am in the Family History Library and want to find a book about the history of a specific county, say, Grayson County, Texas, I can search in the Catalog to see if there is such a book in the Library. Here is a screenshot showing the first of my searches.

I could also do a similar search under the subjects of keywords and titles. If I were in the Library, I could also physically go to the section of books for Texas and search mechanically through the titles.

Here are the results of the search:

This is the first level showing the categories of items available for Grayson County. Here is a screenshot of the selection for History.

Now, this listing does more than just show me what is in the Library. It also informs me of items that I may not have found by searching for keywords and/or titles. The last item on the list does not have the word "history" in its title. In addition, I have no idea what keywords were used for this topic. I did my search using the Place field. This gave me the broadest possible return of items that were associated with this particular county. I can now go to the individual entries and decide which of these items I want to view on the shelves.

When I click on the first item, I see the following:

This item is certainly in the Library, but I find out that the item is also available in a digital copy. When I click on the link to the digital copy this is what I see:

But here is where the Catalog becomes a finding aid. I can copy the title of this book and do a general Google search for the item online anywhere. I find a long list of places that mention this specific book. By clicking down through the list, I found that because the book was relatively recent and still protected by copyright, there were no readily available copies of the book outside of visiting the library. But I now have another place to look. If you look carefully at the entry above, you will see a notice that you can search directly in WorldCat.org to see if there are any other locations where the book might be found. So I click here and find the following:

There are 54 other locations where the book is located. If I were not sitting in the Family History Library, this would be very helpful information. Even if I did not live near to any of the listed locations, I might still be able to obtain a copy of the book through my local library using Interlibrary Loan.

As I look down through the list of items for Grayson County, Texas in the Catalog, I find the following book published back in 1936.

Now I can go to the same to searches; Google and WorldCat.org. WorldCat.org is the largest, online catalog of libraries around the world with over 2 billion catalog entries (more about WorldCat.org and ArchiveGrid later). I find a large number of responses and a lot of additional books and records using the name of the book as a search term.

While I still have the entry in the Catalog, I can also view the list of other Family History Centers and Libraries that have the same item.

What I have shown so far is that when I find something I am interested in listed in the Catalog, I can then use the title of the items as a further search term to find even more resources than those limited to the Family History Library.

Here are the previous posts on this subject.

http://rejoiceandbeexceedingglad.blogspot.com/2016/05/the-familysearch-catalog-worldcat-and.html

Findmypast.com adds 10 million new US records to their marriage collection

At the recent National Genealogical Society Conference, Findmypast.com announced the addition of 10 million new records to the U.S. marriage collection with nearly one million never before published names that can only be found on Findmypast.com. Quoting from the Findmypast.com blog,

This installment of new marriage records is part of our effort to digitize and publish the single largest online collection of U.S. marriages in history. When complete, the collection will contain at least 100 million records and more than 450 million names from 2,800 counties across America. 

The release occurred at the start of the 2016 conference of the National Genealogical Society (NGS) held in Ft. Lauderdale, Florida. As part of an exclusive agreement, all members of NGS enjoy access to Findmypast as one of the benefits included in their society membership. 

While the US marriage collection at Findmypast includes marriages from nearly every state, this installment includes significant additions from Indiana, New York, Illinois, Pennsylvania and Maine.

In the future, Findmypast.com indicates that they will release millions of marriage records every quarter and they intend to complete the project by 2017.

RootsMagic Adds Record Hints from Findmypast.com

I have recently written about the challenges of dealing with a lot of record hints from the large online genealogy programs. Meanwhile, RootsMagic has been going about doing something about the problem. The latest announcement from the RootsMagic Blog addresses the issue with Findmypast.com.

One of the biggest new features in RootsMagic 7 is our amazing WebHints™. RootsMagic automatically searches your favorite genealogy record sites including FamilySearch and MyHeritage for possible matches to your data. As matches are found, a light bulb appears next to each person’s name. Clicking on the light bulb opens up a web browser with the matching records (some records may require a subscription).

RootsMagic is the first software to search multiple providers for matching records. And with today’s update (7.2), we are excited to welcome Findmypast to our WebHints!

 The effective of this upgrade is that now, if you maintain your genealogical database in RootsMagic, the program will show you when any of the three programs has additional record hints for each of the people in your database. I recently worked on entering hundreds of names into RootsMagic for a specialized group of individuals for a university study. I found the WebHints from RootsMagic to be exceptionally valuable in completing some of the information from the study that was missing on certain individuals.

Here is a screenshot of some of the WebHints for one of my own ancestors that I found in my RootsMagic database.

The advantage here is that the availability of the record hints in one location saves time searching each individual website and also allows us to focus on specific research issues. If you already use RootsMagic, you can update your program to use the new features for free.

The FamilySearch Catalog, WorldCat and ArchiveGrid -- Part One

Introduction

I have had several people I talked to lately who were only slightly familiar with the FamilySearch.org website that commented that they had never looked at the Catalog and did not know what it was. But I also had others who had been working on the website for some time who had never looked at the Catalog. The FamilySearch Catalog is the heart of the FamilySearch.org website. It is found in as a dropdown menu item in the "Search" menu at the top of the startup page.

The FamilySearch Catalog primarily contains a listing of the holdings of the Family History Library in Salt Lake City, Utah but also has listings of the contents of the Brigham Young University Family History Library and many other Family History Centers and Libraries around the world. When you look up an item in the Catalog, you can see a dropdown menu of the locations where any item can be located. Here is a screen shot showing the location of the dropdown menu for any item in the Catalog.

This dropdown menu allows you to search the holdings of any of the locations listed. When you locate an item you are interested in, there is another dropdown menu showing you which centers and libraries have that particular item.

The holdings of the various libraries are constantly changing and therefore the Catalog is constantly changing. There is always a lag time between when items are acquired and when they are cataloged and added to the website.

The items listed in the catalog include books, manuscripts, unpublished written collections, diaries, Bible records, documents of all kinds, maps, and tens of thousands of other resources for doing genealogical research. Here is a screenshot of the Catalog startup and search page.

You can see that there are two reference links on the righthand side of the page to the OCLC WorldCat catalog and the ArchiveGrid. For some time now, the FamilySearch Catalog has been integrating its holdings with these two extremely large online catalogs. Presently, nearly all of the entries in the FamilySearch Catalog will also show up on the WorldCat.org website. I will delve into these other two catalog resources further on in this explanation.

As you can further see from the startup/search page, the Catalog is organized and searchable in different categories. You can search by place, surnames, titles, author, subjects or keywords. All library catalogs are somewhat arbitrary. Most of the cataloged items in the online Catalog are physically maintained and organized according to a modified Dewey Decimal System of classification. For these items, the Catalog fulfills its traditional function of a finding aid for physically locating items in the Family History Library in Salt Lake City, Utah. But the Catalog is now a tremendously more powerful research aid and tool and goes far beyond the physical collection of materials in the Salt Lake Family History Library.  

One of the first things to realize about the Catalog is that it also contains links and references to the digitized, online collections of records being converted from paper and microfilm in the Family History Library. Here is a screenshot showing a link to a digitized collection.

As items are being digitized, in many cases, the physical copies of the items are being removed from the shelves of the Family History Library (and some of the other libraries) and archived. Access to the digitized items may be generally available from any computer that can access FamilySearch.org, but in some cases, the distribution of the items is limited to access within the Family History Library or other libraries and centers.

To summarize, the Catalog has multiple functions as follows:

• The Catalog acts as a physical finding aid for items in the various participating centers and libraries
• The Catalog has links to many of the digitized items in the Family History Library and online on the FamilySearch.org website
• The Catalog acts as a finding aid for discovering the types of records that may be used in genealogical research
• The Catalog assists in location records by geographic subdivision and acts, in part, as a gazetteer of geographic jurisdictional subdivisions around the world.  

This is the first part of a series of articles describing the FamilySearch Catalog and its function. The Series will also include a description of both the WorldCat.org website and catalog and the ArchiveGrid website.

Exploring the New Look of the FamilySearch Research Wiki -- Part Four

There are three ways to benefit from the vast resources of the FamilySearch.org Research Wiki:

• You can search by topic such as probate, vital records, land and property etc.
• You can browse by geographic area 
• You can dig down on a subject by starting with the broad, geographically defined area such as a country and follow the same topic down to the smallest geographic subdivision, such as England, County, Parish etc.

Because the Research Wiki is essentially organized as a web-based tool, if you follow the links, the program will continue to provide more information on any particular subject. Of course, the Research Wiki has its limitations. Some areas of the world have very few readily available family history resources, especially those available through the Internet, but as you become involved in using the Research Wiki as a tool, you will begin to develop and more expansive view of what can be used as a resource.

In addition to guidance about strictly genealogical resources, the Research Wiki also contains thousands of articles of general interest about how to do genealogy. The program also comes complete with its own instructions for use and involvement in the Research Wiki community. Any discussion of the Research Wiki could easily dissolve into a list of pages and topics. But the idea behind wiki programs is that you need to explore the contents for yourself, at your own pace and as you develop new interests and needs. The introduction to the Research Wiki is really contained on the startup page. All the links you need to get started are right there.

As shown by the links on the bottom of the page, the Research Wiki even comes in ten different languages. Some of these other language editions of the Research Wiki have had hundreds of thousands of visits.

Given the general nature of the Research Wiki startup page, it is important to realize that there are some basic genealogical research tools built into the program. Here is a summary of the tools found on the Wiki Tools for Research page.

Watching Pages
This is a particularly important function if you find that the Research Wiki is not complete and an article or page needs more detail. The idea of a wiki is that if you know something about a topic and that information is not in the program, then you always have the option of adding the new information. But if you don't know the answer, you can always wait and someone with the information you are seeking may add it to the program. Every page in the Research Wiki has a star at the top of the page. By clicking on the star, if you are a registered user, you will add the page to your own watchlist and will then receive email notifications of any changes made to your watched pages.

Categories
Most of the Research Wiki articles have one or more categories listed near the bottom of the article or page. These categories are constantly being expanded and revised to give an expanded view of articles or pages that the contributors think are related.

Talk Pages
Every page on the Research Wiki has an accompanying Talk Page. In many cases, these pages are blank, but if you have a specific question about an article or the content of an article or page, you can post a question or comment on that page's Talk Page. To add a question or comment, you click on the Edit tab and add in your question. It is appropriate to add your signature to any comments on the Talk Pages. This is done by typing four tildes (~~~~) at the end of your comment.

Navigation List
Links to some of the most useful areas of the Research Wiki are found in a list on the left-hand side of each page. This list is semi-permanent but the content of the linked pages is always being updated.

Ultimately, you may find that you want to edit or contribute to the content of the Research Wiki. Once you are registered as a FamilySearch.org user, you are automatically registered on the Research Wiki and can begin to contribute or edit as you wish to do so. Contributing and editing does require some background, but all of the information you need to get started is already in the Research Wiki. Just click on the link on the startup page and you will eventually find more information than you could have dreamed that anyone would write about contributing.

If you are going to contribute to the content of the Research Wiki, it is a good idea to have your own user page. Whenever I edit or contribute to the Research Wiki, a link to me is automatically generated and recorded with the change information. Many people make changes to the Research Wiki without creating a User Page, but if you create a user page, you can refer people to an explanation of your qualifications for adding new content. The User Page can be of your own design as long as you keep within the objectives and design rules of the Research Wiki.

Finally, it is a good idea to review the policies and procedures of the Research Wiki occasionally to make sure you are operating within the guidelines. Here are some links to the policy pages.

• Guiding Principles
• Wiki Policies
• Wiki Policy Changes or Additions
• Wiki Conditions of Use
• Purpose and Appropriate Topics

Here are the previous installments of this series.

• http://rejoiceandbeexceedingglad.blogspot.com/2016/04/exploring-new-look-of-familysearch_30.html
• http://rejoiceandbeexceedingglad.blogspot.com/2016/04/exploring-new-look-of-familysearch_27.html
• http://rejoiceandbeexceedingglad.blogspot.com/2016/04/exploring-new-look-of-familysearch.html

April, 2016 -- What's New on FamilySearch

For some time now, FamilySearch.org has been posting a monthly update of the changes and new features on the website. Some of the updates are a little premature and give glimpses into changes that are still in the future. Some of the changes, such as the long awaited upgrade to the Research Wiki go unnoticed in the list of things that have changed. Notwithstanding these limitations, there are always a few nuggets of information about the changes to the program.

One of the features that was already announced previously and implemented some time ago, is the ability to see how many people are watching a specific individual in the program when you make a change. I know this exists, but I have only run into it very infrequently since it was introduced. It looks like very few people are watching those ancestors I am concerned about. I did have a rather pleasant interchange with one user who was making unsupported changes to individuals without checking to see in the sources she was adding really applied to the person they were being added to. But apparently, telling her that I was watching that individual did not deter her from making an inappropriate change.

My Great-grandfather, Henry Martin Tanner, probably has tens of thousands of descendants. If I go in to make a change to his Details, I see a notice that says that "10 users of Family Tree are watching this person. If you change this information, these users will be notified." Here is a screen shot of the "warning."

The last change was the addition of a source attached and the addition of his baptism as a "Custom Event" in 1860. This is a duplication of the information in the Ordinance list that shows his baptism on 11 June 1860. Do I delete the duplicate information or let it stand? Additionally, the source cited, the Utah, Early Mormon Missionary Database, is not a valid source for ordinance information. Where do we end up drawing the line on changes?

FamilySearch is still waiting to add an Updated Person Card to the searches and they are planning to expand the ability to send messages directly through the program. We will continue to watch for these changes when they come.

FamilySearch did make it easier to add an unindexed image as a source in the Family Tree. They described this as follows:

FamilySearch has made it easier to attach an image that has not been indexed to a person in Family Tree. If you find an unindexed image that has information about your ancestor, you will be able to edit the title, select the Family Tree person to attach the image to, provide a reason statement, and attach the image to other family members who may appear or be mentioned in the image.

Anything they can do to make attaching sources easier and more efficient is much appreciated.

Exploring the New Look of the FamilySearch Research Wiki -- Part Three

I have often referred to the FamilySearch.org Research Wiki as the most valuable genealogical resource on the Internet and I am still of the opinion that it still. The upgraded format resolves many of limitations and issues I had with the previous version.

The Research Wiki is organized in a way that is completely analogous to the way genealogically important records are created and preserved around the world. Records are created in response to events in a person's life, such as birth, marriage and death. There are an almost endless number of different kinds of records that can be created. The records are most commonly created either by someone who was present at the time of the event or had some kind of duty to record the event. Those responsible for making these records create layers of jurisdictions that correspond to geographic locations of the various events in a person's life. These jurisdictions pile up like pancakes.

At the top of the pile are records created at the national level such as military, census and tax records. The next level down is the state or province. At this level in the United States, we find birth, death and other similar records. Moving down in the jurisdictional stack in the United States, we find counties with the records that are usually created and maintained in the county, such as marriage and land and property records. Proceeding downward, we get to municipalities, including cities, towns, villages and other similar divisions. At this level we have records of school districts, churches, voting districts and other such organizations. The bottom layer consists of personal records; journals, diaries, letters, Bible records and other such items. In order to do effective research, it is necessary to search for records at every one of these levels and all other possible records.

The FamilySearch.org Research Wiki is organized in the same way as records are created and maintained. For almost every topic, there is a corresponding layer of information for each layer of jurisdiction. Here are some screenshots showing these layers of information in the Research Wiki. I will start this example with a reference to Land and Property Records.

Here is a screenshot of the United States level of the Research Wiki with an arrow to the link to Land and Property Records.

By clicking on this link, you can see the general reference to Land and Property Records in the entire United States. You can start with any other country and find references to records organized like this in layers. Here is the article for United States Land and Property Records.

At the bottom of this page (out of the screenshot) there is a list of all the states. If I choose one of the states where my ancestors lived, such as Arizona, I can see more information that is specific to Arizona.

Now, the Arizona page has a further list of all the counties in the state. Here is a screenshot of the list.

Now, if I go further, I could click on Apache County and see even more resources for Land and Property Records depending on the status of the information contributed to the Research Wiki.

You can see that searching for information in the Research Wiki involves learning about the available records in different layers of the organization and digging down into the references to find even more records. You can also search the Research Wiki by topic, but it is more effective to research by jurisdiction and start at the bottom or top.

Stay tuned for next installment of this series. Here is a link to the previous post.

• http://rejoiceandbeexceedingglad.blogspot.com/2016/04/exploring-new-look-of-familysearch_27.html
• http://rejoiceandbeexceedingglad.blogspot.com/2016/04/exploring-new-look-of-familysearch.html