Ancestry, FamilyTreeMaker, RootsMagic Announcement! Wonderful news!

Dear Family Tree Maker™ community, Since our Family Tree Maker announcement last December, we have continued to actively explore ways to develop and support Family Tree Maker and ensure you have choices to preserve your work in ways that matter to you. Today, we are pleased to announce two options for desktop software that will work with Ancestry. Software MacKiev Software MacKiev, with whom we have a long-standing relationship, is acquiring the Family Tree Maker software line as publisher for both Mac and Windows versions. Software MacKiev has been the developer of Family Tree Maker for Mac for more than six years and is thrilled at the opportunity to publish future versions of Family Tree Maker for Mac and Windows. This new agreement means you will receive software updates and new versions from Software MacKiev, and have the ability to purchase new versions of Family Tree Maker from Software MacKiev as they are released. You will have continued access to Ancestry Hints, Ancestry searches, and be able to save your tree on Ancestry with Family Tree Maker moving forward. We have made an agreement with RootsMagic, a leading genealogy desktop software program publisher, to connect Ancestry with the RootsMagic software by the end of 2016. With this new relationship, RootsMagic can serve as your desktop family tree software, while having access to Ancestry hints, Ancestry searches, and the ability to save your tree on Ancestry. We have heard your concerns and are working to provide the solutions you requested. These new agreements will make it possible to preserve your work on Ancestry and Family Tree Maker and enable future features and benefits to help you discover your family history. Be assured that Ancestry, in cooperation with Software MacKiev and RootsMagic, will continue to support you as you discover your family history. We ask for your patience as we work diligently through all the details to make these solutions available. You can find additional details about these Family Tree Maker partnerships on our blog. We also encourage you to continue to check back on our blog for future updates in the coming months. © 2016 ANCESTRY.COM Ancestry.com Operations Inc. 360 West 4800 North, Provo, UT 84604 USA

TheFHGuide.com Goes Live! Help is Here!

July 27, 2015

New Family History Website Released – The Family History Guide

www.thefhguide.com - Overview

SANDY, Utah - July 25, 2015 - Even with the renewed focus and attention placed on family history these days, the fact remains that fewer than 10% of the population - LDS or non-LDS - is actively involved in it. Reasons for not taking the family history plunge are plentiful (and often convincing), but the benefits of being involved are real and tangible, as avid genealogists can attest.

The Family History Guide - a unique, new website free to the public that officially launches today - aims to change the equation by drawing more of the 90% into family history. "We want to get people into the game and help them stay in the game," said Bob Taylor, founder and CEO of The Family History Guide, LLC. "We've developed a simple yet powerful learning system that provides a comfortable harbor in the ocean that can be family history."

People of all backgrounds and skill levels can quickly find the tools and resources they need in The Family History Guide. The innovative design contains a series of Goals, Choices and Steps that lead the learner through the family history experience, in Projects such as Family Tree, Memories, Descendants, Ordinances, Discover (Research), Indexing, Help, and Technology. There are links to over 1,000 videos and articles, all integrated into a smooth instructional sequence that gives learners flexibility and control over their learning paths. The Family History Guide also draws on the resources and strengths of FamilySearch, Ancestry, FindMyPast, MyHeritage, and other sites. "As family history evolves on the web, we'll be right there," continued Taylor. "We point people to the best tools and technologies for family history and research, all within a comfortable framework."

The Family History Guide is also proving to be a powerful tool for classroom instruction. "We've been overwhelmed by the enthusiasm of our early test sites," said Taylor. "Many Family History Consultants have latched onto the site, excited for how it accelerates learning. Even those who were previously reluctant to help patrons are stepping up with more confidence."

The Family History Guide is available at www.thefhguide.com and in the FamilySearch App Gallery at https://familysearch.org/apps.  For more information, contact thefhguide@gmail.com

RootsTech Wednesday

If you attended #RootsTech 2014 I bet you feel like I do -- exhausted and enlightened! As Shipley Munson, from FamilySearch put it the first thing this morning -- RootsTech 2014 is all about new technologies, new methodologies and new directions! Let me add one to that and say, a renewed sense of possibilities.  The possibilities of new discoveries -- participation in new technologies -- and the increased possibilities for sharing and collaboration with all those thousands of cousins.

The Coming...

RootsTech is far-reaching even beyond the walls of this building and physical attendance. The latest attendance numbers have over 8,000 in attendance with people coming from every state in the U.S. except South Dakota --- hey where are you?  Another 4,000 will be in attendance on Saturday. Genealogists are here from 32 other countries. I have visited with people from England, Ireland, Denmark, Canada, Spain, Germany and Mexico - just to name a few.  Within the next three months or so, there will be about 622 sites around the world hosting familyhistory fairs and library sessions where contents from RootsTech will be broadcast.  When all is said and done, it is expected that as many as 150,000 people will have participated in this conference! That is impact!

We have so much genealogy data available to us today at the tip of our fingers - a far cry from the way our ancestors had to do research. However, with all we have there is still an estimated 60 billion historical records that still exist and need to be digitally preserved and indexed. The bulk of online family history research today is focused on the records of North America, Europe and Latin America. Less than 7% of these records are searchable online today.  So one of your missing ancestors is still findable, but hiding - waiting for you and others to uncover them by helping to index them.  Thus, there is the possibility of uncovering their hiding places in your lifetime.  

It is estimated that at the present rate of indexing it will take 300 years just to index all the currently found data.  Every day, more records are being acquired and filmed more than are currently being indexed in a day. So that means we are going in the hole! 

So FamilySearch and current partners, Ancestry.com, FindMyPast, and Myheritage are joining forces to make this indexing happen in one generation - as little as 20 to 30 years! Well, at least for me, in my grandchildren 's lifetime.

As the RootsTech pirate, Capt. Jack Starling said "Dead men tell no tales -- but their obituaries do!"  Yes, the goal announced today is for 100 million obituaries to be indexed this year.  So, come on everyone, call your friends, find those missing South Dakotans, contact all your cousins and challenge them to a dual at indexing obits this year!  These obituaries tell the STORIES of our ancestor's lives. 

If 100 million sounds like a lot to do, let me break that down. If the 12,000 people in attendance here at RootsTech just transcribed one obituary a day for a year we would index about four million obituaries. If we get all 150,000 people who ultimately watch RootsTech online or at a fair or library to do the same, we would have about 55 million indexed obits. Much better! Now, if all 150,000 people who benefit in any way from RootsTech were to ask someone else to do the same, we actually could easily beat that goal of 100 million indexed obituaries in less than one year!  Come on, let's do this!!

Well, more to come tomorrow. Until then, enjoy a few pics from today's activities!  And,beware of typos - it's been a long day... Zzzzzzz

The Before...

The Prep...

The Start...

The Humor...

The facts...

The food...

The Entertainment...

The Going...

Ancestry.com and FamilySearch to Make a Billion Global Records Available Online

Just in case you missed this announcement here it is again..

Groundbreaking Agreement to Deliver Valuable Historical Content Over the Next Five Years

PROVO, Utah, September 5, 2013 – Ancestry.com and FamilySearch International (online at FamilySearch.org), the two largest providers of family history resources, announced today an agreement that is expected to make approximately 1 billion global historical records available online and more easily accessible to the public for the first time. With this long-term strategic agreement, the two services will work together with the archive community over the next five years to digitize, index and publish these records from the FamilySearch vault.

The access to the global collection of records marks a major investment in international content as Ancestry.com continues to invest in expanding family history interest in its current markets and worldwide. Ancestry.com expects to invest more than $60 million over the next five years in the project alongside thousands of hours of volunteer efforts facilitated by FamilySearch.

“This agreement sets a path for the future for Ancestry.com and FamilySearch to increasingly share international sets of records more collaboratively,” said Tim Sullivan, CEO of Ancestry.com. “A significant part of our vision for family history is helping provide a rich, engaging experience on a global scale. We are excited about the opportunities it will bring to help benefit the family history community and look forward to collaborating with FamilySearch to identify other opportunities to help people discover and share their family history.”

The organizations will also be looking at other ways to share content across the two organizations. Both organizations expect to add to the already digitized records shared across the two websites in addition to new record projects to be completed over the next five years.

"We are excited to work with Ancestry.com on a vision we both share," said Dennis Brimhall, President of FamilySearch. "Expanding online access to historical records through this type of collaboration can help millions more people discover and share their family's history."

This marks a groundbreaking agreement between the two services. But the two organizations aren’t strangers to working with each other; hundreds of millions of records have already been shared and are available on Ancestry.com and FamilySearch.org. The companies also announced in early 2013 an additional project where they plan to publish 140 million U.S. Wills & Probate images and indexes over the next three years—creating a national database of wills and other probate documents spanning 1800-1930 online for the very first time.