Area FH Newsletter August 2010

1. Online film ordering This went live in Canada on August 19. What does this mean? You order and pay for microfilms and fiche online and then go to the FHC to view them – less paperwork and less money for the FHC to handle. The United States will be next to move to online film ordering (before the end of the year hopefully). Go to https://film.familysearch.org . Contact your local FHC for implementation details. This new web site does not use an lds account nor a familysearch account for the sign in. FHCs have the opportunity to upload inventory and other information from Inventory Manager to the new system. There is an Admin side to the web site for FHC directors. The new system will replace Inventory Manager. Please be extra kind and patient with everyone working in FHCs until they learn the new system.
2. nFS Update We hope that you noticed the update to nFS on 9 August (click on the News and Updates link on the sign in page for nFS to get to the What’s New document). These What’s New documents are good to save to your computer (they are pdf files) or print if you wish. A couple of problems have become apparent since the update and the engineers are working on resolving the issues asap – so don’t call to report either of these problems: 1. Some recently completed temple ordinances are not appearing in nFS in a timely fashion, 2. Russian & Italian FAQ’s (Frequently Asked Questions) is blank.
3. Discussions in nFS. Please teach people to use the discussions tab in nFS but not to discuss or share ordinance information. The public will be able to see those items being discussed when it goes worldwide.
4. Community Volunteers As part of the preparations for making nFS public, community volunteers who have public/familysearch accounts no longer have access to temple ordinances. They can still help members with temple questions if they wish to by sitting beside a member who is signed in.
5. Beta FamilySearch.org Please check out http://fsbeta.familysearch.org/ , get familiar with the new version of familysearch.org and share it with people in your ward. Remember that not all the data has been migrated to the new site yet.
6. Griffiths Valuation online For those interested in Irish research an important resource has become available online. “The Primary Valuation was the first full-scale valuation of property in Ireland. It was overseen by Richard Griffith and published between 1847 and 1864. It is one of the most important surviving 19th century genealogical sources.” It is available at http://www.askaboutireland.ie/griffith-valuation/index.xml
7. Calgary Temple Construction workers are on the Calgary Temple site. An unofficial web site http://www.ldschurchtemples.com/calgary/ has construction photographs.
8. Family Insight will work with more programs. There is exciting news coming from Family Insight. This is a quote from the Summer 2010 issue 38 edition of Ohana Insights: “. . . almost 2 years ago, we changed the name of our product from PAF Insight to FamilyInsight. . . . Today, we are announcing our latest major update. You may now use PAF and Family Tree Maker 2010 files with FamilyInsight without the need of a GEDCOM file. We will be compatible with 2011 when that version of Family Tree Maker is released very soon. Ancestral Quest and RootsMagic users can join us in beta testing FamilyInsight for that program. Legacy users, please don’t loose heart, the ability to read a Legacy file is under development. We hope to develop the ability to work with other programs, too. If you are interested in helping us with our beta testing, please send an email to beta@ohanasoftware.com telling us which program you use and would like to help test with. To use these additional program files in FamilyInsight, you will simply open FamilyInsight from the desktop icon and select your Family Tree Maker (.ftm), Ancestral Quest (.aq), RootsMagic (.rmg) or Legacy (.fbd) file.” http://www.ohanasoftware.com/ We are blessed to have so many fine programs to choose from. I know the choices can seem like a burden at times but they really are a great blessing. PAF, PAF with Family Insight or Ancestral Quest, Rootsmagic, Ancestral Quest or Legacy or Family Tree Maker are all great choices. Be kind to those who make different choices from you. Neither of you is wrong!
9. Temple Policies. We previously recommended that you go to the Help Centre in nFS and search for Temple Policies to find a comprehensive knowledge document on Temple Policies. They have now renumbered that help document! The new number is 110136. Access this either by using the search term Temple policies or by searching for 110136. I added this to my favourites in the Help Centre. This is an important document for FH Consultants, Priesthood leaders and all members doing FH work. It is a good source of material to teach.
10. FH Blog Continue to encourage all family history consultants that you know to either read our FH blog (preferably weekly) or subscribe (on the blog page midway down on the right) to receive new articles by email. We publish at about 3 a.m. each Sunday morning. The address for the blog is http://peterfh.wordpress.com/
11. FH Consultants still need to register. All FH Consultants should go to consultant.familysearch.org to register with the FamilySearch. Interested Priesthood leaders should register at priesthood.familysearch.org. This puts you on the FamilySearch email list for occasional news items and gives you access to additional training materials through the help center at nFS.

Thank you for all that you do!

Upcoming blog articles:
1. The future of FamilySearch
2. Notes from devotional and key note presentations at the BYU FH Conference.
3. The Future of FH Centres – this will be a multi part article!
4. More Google for Genealogists
Plus any articles you would like to write or topics you would like to suggest.
Please contribute and read comments!

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GOOGLE IS FOR GENEALOGISTS

by Lianne Krüger

This article is part one of an introduction to how and why Google can be beneficial to a genealogist. We will review how to search, some terminology, how to narrow your search by using operators such as +, -, *, OR and quotes. Part two will be an article on advanced features of google searches.

INTRODUCTION
Genealogists love Google. It is said that the second largest number of websites on the internet is genealogical websites. That means that there are millions and probably billions of websites that contain genealogical information. There are commercial websites, free websites and family websites. In all of that, how do you find your ancestors? A search engine is necessary and Google is one of the best. Later I will discuss the difference between the Google and Yahoo!

A search engine can be used to search for web pages that contain
 names of their ancestors
 information about the locations ancestors lived
 photos of people, sites, buildings
 history of towns, cities, counties, etc
 graveyard site locations and contact information, and
 contact information for locations from county to national records.

NOTE
A web browser is a program used to facilitate entry to and usage of the internet; used to view HTML documents.

NOTE
URL stands for Uniform Resource Locator. Each web page, on the internet, has its own individual address known as an URL. The URL for Google is http://www.google.com or for Canadians http://www.google.ca

SEARCHING
BEGIN
In your web browser type http://www.google.com
When Google appears type what you would like to search for inside the box, where the cursor is blinking.

NOTE
Google does not differentiate between upper and lower case. It searches as if all text is in lower case.

HITS
The number of oo ’s gives an indication of the number of result pages. Click on the number [indicating the page number] or the oo’s above the number. You can also click on Next will get you to the next page of hits.

To view one of these hit pages, click on the title of the website. The title is underlined blue lettering.

To return to the list, click on the Back button [white arrow in blue circle], located at the top left hand side of the screen.

After reviewing all the web pages on the first page, go to the next page of lists by:
1. Scroll to the bottom of the page
2. Click on the number 2 or
Click on the “o” above the 2.

Try This
1. Do a search with your name.
If there are no results with your name, try a name of a family member.
2. Select a page that contains your name.
3. Use the back button to return to the index search page.

DID YOU MEAN?
When I search for my name “Lianne Kruger” Google asks “Did you mean?” Lianne Krueger.

When Google thinks you spelled something wrong, even if you didn’t, it will ask this.
 If you spelled it correctly, ignore this.
 If you did spell it incorrectly, click on the new spelling which is a link and Google will search again giving you a new list of website results.

NARROWING YOUR SEARCH
When I google for Lianne Kruger there are 688 hits. That is a little much. I am not that popular! We need to narrow the search. Most of your ancestors will not be that popular either.

BE SPECIFIC
When searching, include as many words as possible to describe who or what you are looking for. Include the name and the location. The next article will illustrate how to put in years.

timothy bancroft clay county missouri

Also include spouses or other family names

timothy bancroft nancy davis clay county missouri

OPERATORS
Another way to narrow our search is by using what is called Operators. In math operators were the +, -, *, /, SUM, etc. Google can do math which will be shown later but we can also use these operators to define the text we would like to search.

THIS AND THAT
+ [the plus sign]

The + plus sign operator indicates that both names must be present on the webpage to qualify for a hit. By typing in the following many of the hits are eliminated. Those pages which contained just kruger and those which contained only lianne are no longer displayed.

lianne + kruger

DON’T INCLUDE THAT
- [the minus sign]

If you are looking for ancestors with the last name Pitt there would be more Brad Pitts than anything else. To exclude all websites that contained Brad, the minus sign “-“ is used.

word(s) –word

pitt -brad

If your ancestor’s name was Brad Pitt then I will exclude California or the word movie.
pitt -california
pitt -movie

NOTE
There is no space after the minus sign “-“. This will not work if there is a space between the – and the text to be excluded.

1. Type the word(s) to search
2. Press the Space bar
3. Type a Minus sign –
4. Do not press the space bar [no space]
5. Type the word to eliminate
6. Press Enter.

If you did a search for Princeton, most of those sites would be for Princeton, New Jersey. If you wanted Princeton, British Columbia instead, then you would want to exclude all websites that contained New Jersey. To exclude any sites that have “New Jersey” in it, the minus sign “-“ is used.

word(s) –“word word”

Search for “timothy bancroft”
Note many of the hits on the first page have bancroft-hinchey. Not the correct person.

Type “timothy bancroft” –Hinchey

If there is more than one word to eliminate use more than one minus sign by repeating steps 3 thru 5. With timothy bancroft there are now websites with “pediatrician” Eliminate those by adding another –[minus sign] operator.
“timothy bancroft” –hinchey -pediatrician

We can also use this for brad pitt by excluding both movie and california at the same time.
brad pitt –movie -california

Try This
1. Search your name. Eliminate anything that appears often that is not related to you.

WORDS BETWEEN
* [the asterix sign]

If you don’t know the middle name of your ancestor or not sure how they would spell it this operator is great. Type in the example below and note the hits. You will see words between the first name Timothy and the last name Bancroft. The * indicates that there is something between the two words. Doesn’t matter how many words or characters there are.

Try This
timothy * bancroft

USING QUOTES
Another operator used to narrow searches is quotes. Quotes indicate that you want only pages where the text appears exactly as it appears within the quotes. Type in “lianne kruger” and note the number hits versus the original search.

Try the examples below, Red Deer, Alberta with and without quotes. Note the difference of hits between the two searches.

Red Deer Alberta and “Red Deer” Alberta

Here is another example from earlier. This time use quotes. There are three hits instead of several pages.

“timothy bancroft” “nancy davis” “clay county” missouri

Sometimes this will eliminate all hits or narrow too many websites and you might miss some information. What if the last name appears before the first name, or they don’t list Nancy’s last name? It is good to do both. The following operation is also useful.

OR OPTION
In some websites the first name could come before the last name or after with a comma. The OR operator allows us to search for both in the same search at the same time.

word OR word

NOTE
OR must be capitalized

macKellar OR mckellar

1. Type the word you want to search
2. Press the Space bar
3. Type OR
4. Press the Space bar
5. Type the other word
6. Press Enter.

The | key may be used instead of OR.

NOTE
| is found on the keyboard with the \

Google will usually include Mackellar when mckellar is typed in. The OR operator is used for more than one word by using quotes.

“word(s)” | “word(s)”

“kruger, lianne” OR “lianne kruger”

MATH CLASS
Back to math class! Remember those math operators we used for words. They can also be used with numbers. If you need a calculator and don’t have one with you, Google can help you. Suppose you are trying to figure out what year someone was born. The article says they died in 1875 at the age of 47. Type in Google in the box you use for searches the following:
1875 – 47

A little calculator icon appears, the formula and the answer.
1875 – 47 = 1828

Note:
If they have already had their birthday then this is correct. If they have not then they were born in 1827.

CONCLUSION
Have fun and experiment with the operators above.

This article has been an introduction to searching. There is so much more Google can do for you. The next article will include more operators which allow you to search for a range of years, how to search only one website and view sites similar to another. It will also include how to view old websites, search for images, translate a website and more.

—–
Lianne Krüger researched her family line back to the first three land owners of Canada. She has a genealogical historical article published by BYU Studies magazine involving Massachusetts and Missouri. Lianne is presently researching Ireland and Missouri. She received a computer degree in 1979, has been teaching computers since 1982 and has written computer instruction manuals.

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Division numbers in standardized Prairie place names in nFS

This is a follow up to the article on July 25. I am grateful to the people in the FH Dept in SLC who helped me find information on this question.
Let me express my appreciation and admiration for those working on the list of standardized place names. What a monumental project – and remember this is also a global project. Place names change over time. I think all of us as genealogist realize the importance of using the correct place name for the time of the event we are documenting.
The Division numbers that were appearing in Prairie place names in nFS were census division numbers. After the census created and used them, other administrative functions found them useful for voting and tax purposes. This is helpful information, and if we were citing information from the census it would be very important to know the census division number.
For examples of the census division number do a search in Wikipedia for say Calgary and in the information box on the right you will see the census division number.
Is a census division number part of a place name? I don’t know anyone who includes a census division number as part of a place name. I have been told that they will be removed from place names in nFS in the next update to the standardized names list.
I was assured that “Standards maintained by the Church follow the philosophy of representing what the world regards as proper for modern and historical context; following geographic, governmental, religious, cartographical norms, not just genealogical usage norms.”
The census division information may be used in the update to Record Search and in other FamilySearch products.
It is important that we help the good people working on these projects. Their work is important and they deserve our help, so please send in Feedback any time you see something that needs to be changed or if you have a suggestion for an improvement.

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Summer Catch up

1. We hope that you are having a wonderful summer. One of the nice things about the blog is that I can pre-arrange to have articles posted automatically when I am not here! After family reunions, and a trip to Utah for the Annual Area Adviser Training session and BYU FH Conference I am back home for a while. We have lots to share after the sessions in Utah and we will offer these to you over the next few weeks.
2. The training site will be down until about August 15 for upgrading. We have told you (we hope!) about training.familysearch.org which is a training system for the new FamilySearch web site. This system contains fictitious names, dates and localities. Here you can learn how to add, edit, combine and submit names for temple ordinances without the fear of making mistakes with real data. Sometimes this is called the “sandbox.” It is a great place to learn! Just don’t try to use it until after August 15! They are updating the website to include the new features in nFS.
3. New software certified to work with nFS is available. We noticed some interesting new products in the link on the sign in page to nFS (lower right link under More Great Products) – we know there is a lot there so just let us suggest three:
a. MacFamilyTree version 6. This is the first full data management package for the mac we have seen certified. We have no idea what integration with nFS is available. Perhaps some mac user can let us know? Mobile Family Tree (not to be confused with MobileTree) for the ipod/iphone/ipad is a companion product to MacFamilyTree. We hope mac users will also remember the pending release of Family Tree Maker for the mac!
b. Family Photoloom. This is free web site that links nFS data to your photos. We haven’t tried it yet and would appreciate your comments.
c. Gaia Family Tree. This software, which helps you build your family tree, has a 14 day free trial and then costs CAD$9.95 for the full version. The maker is Lulu Software which is a Quebec based company! Again we would appreciate you sharing your comments!
It is impossible for each of us to try all of these products but if each of us tried one and shared a comment it would help all of us.
4. The beta testing for the next update to nFS (version 0.992) ended on August 5, so watch for the update which should be happening shortly (remember to check the News and Updates link on the sign in page for the latest What’s new document). The list of changes in this update is not long. Much of it deals with adding the remaining 5 Asian Temples.
5. Among the highlights of the BYU Family History Conferences were the morning devotionals on each of the first 3 days. The first devotional was given by Elder Dennis B. Neuenschwander – “It Is More than About Names”. There is information on all 3 devotionals at http://ce.byu.edu/cw/cwgen/keynote.cfm . There is also a link on that page to the full text of Elder Dennis B. Neuenschwander’s talk (it says it is 13 pages but the last page is blank). I hope you will enjoy reading this! I was particularly moved by the section starting in the middle of page 10 (I suppose that this might be a logical place to stop, . . . ) to the end of 12. The other 2 devotionals were excellent, but you will have to depend on my notes in a future blog to learn about those!

Next week’s blog article will answer the question ”What does the division number in Prairie place names mean?” (a follow-up to the article posted on July 25). The following week we have a guest author, Lianne Kruger, who has kindly written a two part article for us on Google for Genealogists.

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Internet is Resource, But Not Do-All Genealogy Tool

Dick Eastman in his newsletter on 27 June 2010 reminded us of the need to see the appropriate role of the Internet in genealogy:

“Julie Miller writes a genealogy column in the Broomfield Enterprise, a newspaper and web site published in Broomfield, Colorado. I would suggest that Julie’s latest column should be required reading for all new genealogists.

Julie writes, “The Internet has drastically changed how genealogy research is done. The amount of information posted on the Internet is increasing at an amazing pace every day. The ads might say you can find your complete family history by searching a Web site, but even though the Internet has billions and billions of pages filled with information, not everything is on the Internet.”

A few paragraphs later, she writes, “Although these sites have millions of records, they represent only a fraction of the records that have been preserved over the centuries of human record keeping. If only the Internet is used to collect information, the majority of family history will be missed or recorded incorrectly.”

Experienced genealogists have already learned this but thousands of newcomers keep asking, “Isn’t everything on the Internet?” Julie Miller’s column sets the facts straight. You can save yourself a lot of time, effort, and frustration if you read Julie Miller’s article at http://www.broomfieldenterprise.com/ci_15379828 “

The article in the paper concludes:
“The misconception that all genealogy information can be found on the Internet continues to persist. Some Internet sites proclaim that everything needed for genealogy research is on their site. Many of these sites are official looking and appear to be run by experts. Do not be fooled into believing the claims.
The Internet is definitely a powerful tool for genealogical research. Checking online for information is part of a good research strategy. Just don`t expect to find everything there.”

Thank you Dick and Julie – good advice!

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