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

UVTAGG July 10th Saturday Seminar - Come Join Me!

The next regular, second-Saturday-of-the-month meeting of the Utah Valley Technology and Genealogy Group - UVTAGG will be on Saturday, 10 July 2014, from 9 am to noon in the LDS "Red Chapel", 4050 North Timpview Drive (650 East), Provo.  Information about the Group, meeting location,  main presentations, classes, and class notes are available on their website  http://uvtagg.org. The meetings are free and open to the public. 

Map of the Meeting Location
 Whether your ancestor was a Smith, Jones, Brown, or Johnson, Juliana share some tips for tracking them down on Ancestry.com and beyond. Using charts, spreadsheets, and a little common sense, you’ll leave this class with some ideas for narrowing your search.

Juliana Szucs Smith has been working for Ancestry.com for more than 15 years. She began her family history journey trolling through microfilms at the tender age of 11 with her mother.  She has written many articles for online and print genealogical publications and wrote the “Computers and Technology” chapter of The Source: A Guidebook of American Genealogy. Juliana holds a certificate from Boston University’s Online Genealogical Research Program, and is currently on the clock working towards certification from the Board for Certification of Genealogists.

After the main presentation the following classes are scheduled:

(1)   Getting the Most From Your Discoveries, by Juliana Szucs Smith;  

(2)  Using LDS Partner Web Sites:  Find My Past, by Sue Maxwell;

(3)   MAC: IProblems, IGetStarted, and IHelp, by Ron Snowden;  

(4)  Ask An Expert (Personal Help), by Don Engstrom & Finn Hansen;  

(5)  Video from last month’s main presentation, Are You Your Own Brick Wall?, by Beth Taylor;

(6)  Ancestral Quest, by Gaylon Findlay;  

(7)  Legacy, by Marilyn Thomsen;

(8)  RootsMagic, by Bruce Buzbee. 

  The meetings are always open to the public and generally open with announcements that include what is happening in technology that effects family history work. A featured guest speaker will then make a one hour presentation on a topic of general interest relating to some aspect of technology and genealogy. 

Is this a WIN-WIN? Findmypast acquires Mocavo

Yesterday, two major players in the genealogy community announced that Mocavo was being acquired by Findmypast.  You can read the fine details here Findmypast announcement and Mocavo announcement.

It’s always a guessing game when two major players in the genealogy community join forces, one acquiring another, or merging to become one. I find myself second-guessing the motives and where the win-win might be in the transaction.  So here is my take ...

Mocavo.com, a privately held internet company based in Colorado, first launched in March of 2011 as an index to all free online genealogy information. It searches the National Archives, Library of Congress, FreeBMD, Find A Grave, Rootsweb, Archives.org and many others, including many U.S. state archives, message boards, family trees, and the many genealogy web sites built by you and me. It finds many records that you could find individually by searching each and every site, but it does it in one search from their site. In just the past couple of years, Mocavo.com has added their own acquired records including millions of pages of yearbooks. They also have a paid version that has added benefits. Later in 2011 they launched Mocavo.co.uk, expanding beyond the U.S. 

The following year Mocavo acquired ReadyMicro, a company that specializes in digitization and preservation services. So Mocavo was already beginning to expand their business model to include acquired records and become more than a genealogy search engine. 

Cliff Shaw, the original founder of Mocavo, is the technical brain. Among the various backers behind Mocavo is our own fellow genealogist, Michael J. Leclerc who is a former director at the New England Historic Genealogical Society and a former board member of APG and many other positions. He added the genealogical brains to Mocavo a year later in 2012. 

Cliff Shaw was also the founder of GenForum that was later sold to The Learning Company/A&E Television Networks; founder of Pearl Street Software that was sold to MyHeritage; founder of ProtectMyPhotos which eventually became PicStreem and then BackupMyTree.com (an automatic backup service for family trees). BackupMyTree was acquired by MyHeritage in 2012. MyHeritage is now well known for its Smart Matching search techniques.

Are you seeing a pattern here?

Findmypast has been around since 1965 in various forms, beginning as a small group of professional and probate genealogists.  It is a privately held online genealogy service owned by a UK company, DC Thomson Family History (previously known as brightsolid). Back in 2003 the website was known as “1837online” which was a pay-per-view service that allowed access to BDM registers from the General Register Office (GRO) in England. Gradually they added many records including the UK censuses. 

In 2009/10, Brightsolid acquired both Genes Reunited (British newspapers) and its sister company, Friends Reunited (social network), both UK companies. In 2012, they created a partnership with the British Library to publish 100 years of the UK electoral registers. They have since partnered with FamilySearch, the New England Historic Genealogical Society, Society of Genealogists, and the UK National Archives. 

And another of our brilliant genealogists, D. Joshua Taylor joined Findmypast as Business Development Manager and is now the Data Strategy Manager – North America and the lead genealogist. He also is a former director at the New England Historic Genealogical Society (NEHGS) and was a featured genealogist on “Who Do You Think You Are”. He currently serves as the President for the Federation of Genealogical Societies (FGS).

See more connections and patterns?

Interestingly, Findmypast has had its fair share of controversy recently after changing their website interface and subscribers voicing their difficulty with the search engine.  Plenty of complaints were made directly to the company and throughout the genealogical community. The company shared in the news media, just two months ago, that they would “listen to customers’ feedback and make the necessary improvements as quickly as possible”. 

Findmypast has been suffering from the same out-of-date technology issues that Ancestry faced with their switch to the “new search” and dropping “old search”, and even FamilySearch has been dealing with the changes from newFamilySearch to the current FamilySearch. Old technology is something we all have to deal with, whether it’s with a company we do business with, a software package we purchase or use (think PAF being discontinued), or even the vehicle we drive (don't you just wish you still had that old clunker you loved so much?). Technology changes faster than most other areas of our lives and is a very costly and difficult part of any business. It required CHANGE and ADAPTATION on our part, as well.

So, looking at the latest announcement from Findmypast and Mocavo, and all the above details, this acquisition makes perfect sense to me. There are some heavy hitters with significant technical and genealogical knowledge finding ways to join forces, blending their various expertise to make their businesses stronger and provide us, as users, additional and better products. Besides that, I see some of the successful entrepreneurs in this industry who have terrific ideas that become very successful. After they grow it to the best it can be, they sell it off to another company who has the need giving the seller the capital to either move on or further enhance their product. I see the perfect WIN-WIN for everyone. So I’m excited for this change and look forward to both Findmypast and Mocavo becoming better than they were yesterday! Mocavo needs capital and Fndmypast needs better search capability. The two companies can remain somewhat independent but share in the knowledge each offers. 

Think Findmypast, MyHeritage and FamilySearch partnerships! Also, a terrific WIN-WIN!

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...