Recent Changes at FamilySearch

 

1. There is now one help centre shared by FamilySearch.org and new.FamilySearch.org.
   1. Learn to use the new Help Centre!  – go to nFS then Help Center (or FamilySearch.org and click on Help) – then Especially for new.FamilySearch.org then See the Whole List – then “Using this new Help Center”
   2. For Tutorials and Guides for nFS scroll down to the section Especially for new.familysearch.org and click on See the Whole List
   3. Some of the training resources have been moved to the updated Consultant.familysearch.org website (see #2 below)
   4. How do I view My Cases?  Go to Help then select Contact FamilySearch (on right of screen) and then View My Cases.
2. Consultant.familysearch.org has been updated so the site does more than allow you to register
   1. If you are a new FH Consultant register at consultant.familysearch.org
   2. Sign in when you first go to the site and you have 2 choices:
      1. Training – for online training and other resources that you used to access under the Training and Resources tab at the old Help Center
      2. Preferences – can edit your profile – such as updating your email address, telephone number, calling
3. new.FamilySearch has been updated
   1. Now at version .994 and there will be some public access.  Basically they are testing the public access interface with a few people.
   2. There are 2 versions of the What’s New document for this update:    (1) Using the link under News and Updates on the sign in page shows a getting started document written for new public users.  (2) Use the new link to What’s New at the top left on the nFS home page (that is the page that appears after you sign in and has Welcome and your name).  If you go to the Help Center then Especially for new.FamilySearch.org and then See Whole List, you will see both What’s New documents!  One is for LDS and one for the public!
   3. On the sign in page is a message “Your contact preferences have been reset to show your contact name and e-mail address only. To change your contact preferences, click Update My Profile and Preferences on the Home page.”  In other words, in preparation for public use of the site they have reset the preferences so that only contact names and email addresses show.  As far as I am concerned that is all you should be showing!  Putting up your street address and telephone number is, in my opinion, not a good idea. Please continue to teach people only to share their contact name and email address.
   4. Change in link Sign in to Help Someone Else – default is for helping a member of the public (only asks for contact name and helper access number) – to help a member you need to click on “use a full name and birth date instead of the contact name” otherwise you won’t be able to sign in to help a member.

I probably missed some changes  . . .  and reserve the right to tell you as soon as I find them!

This changes every handout and every presentation we have!

I assume that we will get an email from FamilySearch telling us about these things  . . .  but I didn’t want to wait.

 

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FH Centre Classes – what would you like to learn?

We know that a good function for FHC’s is to offer classes and workshops.  This is reinforced in the new Leader’s Guide to Temple and Family History “To Turn the Hearts” on page 9 :

Family history centers give members and community patrons access to:

 Genealogical resources.

 Classes and workshops.

 One-on-one assistance.

So what classes and workshops might we offer.  We are grateful to the Riverbend FHC for sharing a survey they are conducting in their stake as it gives a list of potential classes

Riverbend Stake Family History Centre Survey
Family History Centre classes: What would you like to learn?

7:00 PM to 8:30 PM

New.Familysearch made simple.

 Adding ancestors

 Eliminating duplicate records

 Assign ordinances to myself? Or to the temple?

 Connecting PAF with New.familysearch.org

 Downloading your ancestors from New.familysearch.org

PAF – free Personal Ancestral File software

 Create a family history book from your PAF data file in minutes

 Easily create electronic documents to email to others

 Backing up PAF (or other) files to CD/DVD, flash drive, etc.

How to research online

  Updated FamilySearch.org website (formerly Beta)

  Census and vital records

  Google

  Family History Library Favorites

Research help for:

 Canada

 USA

 UK

 Poland

 Ireland

 Hispanic

 Scandinavia

 other? ___________________________________

The best evening for me is:  Tuesday    Wednesday    Thursday

Name: ________________  Email: _______________________

Further suggestions they have received are: “ Descendancy Research would also be a good topic.  I think it would be especially good in Utah and other areas where families have been in the Church for multiple generations, but most wards have people in that situation. (note: there are free online lessons on descendancy research at familysearch.org)

Another asked whether some of the classes might be taught in the local wards by ward consultants. I think that can be a good option in some cases, especially in rural wards where parents bring their children to activities and then wait for them. (Of course, it might also be a good time to start with the basic 7-lesson course.)

The basic course requires less advance preparation than some of the other topics, so it will be easier for consultants to teach. The topics in the survey obviously vary in complexity. Some of the topics can be covered in 5 or 10 minutes, whereas 2 hours might not be enough for some of the others. We chose them as possible topics of interest to get members to come to the FHC, but the survey can also be adapted by consultants for use in their own wards.”

You could invite people to come to share the experience of taking some of the online courses available through FamilySearch – particularly the video lessons.  This would enrich the discussions following the lessons.

Thank you for sharing this material Riverbend FHC

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familytech.familysearch.org

New web site from FamilySearch currently in alpha testing.  Thought you might like to try it.  Link came from labs.familysearch.org where it says “Discover technologies that will improve your family history research and knowledge.”

Looks like some interesting articles!

Please try this site and send Feedback

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Area FH Newsletter February 2011

1. Ancestry.com. If you notice that your FHCentre Director has a larger smile than normal . . . perhaps it is at least partly due to the announcement that the library edition of Ancestry.com is available in all FHCs!!!  The announcement was sent out on Feb 8.  Ancestry.com is available in the FHC Portal under Premium Subscription services.
2. Leader’s Guide to Temple and Family History – Turn the Hearts The guide is available on lds.org.  Go to Menu then Serving in the Church then Melchizedek Priesthood then Leader Resources then scroll down.  The guide will be officially printed and distributed with a DVD in a few months.  Lots of wonderful information in the guide – and for those of you graphically inclined – there are lots of pictures and quotes! You will also notice as you go to the Leader’s Guide on the lds.org web site that there is an online interactive version of the new Handbook 2 Administering the Church.
3. nFS Training Site Please remember not to put test, trial or ficticious information to nFS.  When you want to use try out features or teach, then use the training.familysearch.org web site which has only ficticious information.  Treat it as your sandbox!
4. nFS Reference Manual Did you know there is a 71 page reference manual for nFS?  You can find it if you go to the Help Center, then Training and Resources then click on More in the area titled Training and Other Helpful Resources.   On the title page it says “This manual is intended to be used with the new FamilySearch User’s Guide and information available in the Help Center.”    The Reference Manual is considerably shorter than the User Guide. There is a link for Feedback. MIA
5. How do you find PAF on new version of familysearch.org? Click on Learn at top of screen and search for Software.  Look for item PAF and Other Genealogy Software (usually number 3 on the list of results).  At the end of the first paragraph in the article there is a link (Click Here) to get the download.
6. Indexing Please continue to encourage indexing.  Great progress was made last year, but there is much more to be done. The scanning of microfilms is ahead of the indexing.  Great to invite your friends and neighbours to do!  Did my first batch on a Mac this past week.  Worked just fine.
7. Webinars There are lots of really good webinars available to help us learn.  Recently I came across some on the Legacy Family Tree site to help with Indexing! If you are new to indexing, please watch Jim Ericson’s introductory webinar first at http://www.millenniacorp.com/_videos/webinars/20101006fsindexing/indexing.html.  if you go to  http://www.legacyfamilytree.com/Webinars.asp, to see the archived webinars you will find one which includes tips and tricks for experienced indexers.  There are more webinars at http://rootsmagic.com/Webinars/ on Rootsmagic topics . . . and the list goes on.  Do you have any favourite webinar sites for FH?  Please share.
8. How do you find online FH courses through FamilySearch.org? Go to Learn at top of screen and search for Online Courses. First item in results is How-To Genealogy Learning Online with links to FamilySearch courses, BYU courses, NGS course, National Institute for Genealogical Studies and more.

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Some RootsTech Conference sessions available online

The RootsTech Conference is being held in Salt Lake City from Feb 10 to 12.  Several of the sessions are available live and online – and for free!  Sorry about the short notice.  I thought this had been announced by FamilySearch and sent out to everyone – but I met with a group of consultants last night and no one had heard about it.

Go to http://rootstech.familysearch.org/

Look for the link in Free Live Presentations Online – on the right after you scroll down

Some sessions from each of the 3 days are being broadcast live.

RootsTech is a new FH  Conference.  It replaces the annual Computers and Genealogy Conference usually held at BYU.

“RootsTech is a new conference designed to bring technologists together with genealogists, so they can learn from each other and find solutions to the challenges we face in family history research today. Genealogists and family historians will discover exciting new research tools while technology creators will learn the latest development techniques from industry leaders and pioneers.”

I hear that around 2000 people are in attendance.

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What happened to the IGI ? Part 2

Now we have a new version of FamilySearch.org and there is no menu item for the IGI, so where did the IGI go?

The simple answer is that the member submissions went to nFS and the Extracted Records are still on FamilySearch.org in Historical Records.  How do you find them?

I have to admit that I was one of the people that worried about losing the ability to search by Batch Numbers when I saw the beta familysearch site – and sent a request for their continuation as a search field.

Now . .. .  having done a little searching I am pleased to see the batch numbers in the search results in Historical Records – but I don’t need to go away to look up a batch number in order to do a search.

Let me demonstrate.

I want to look for births or christenings or marriages in the parish of Wath upon Dearne in Yorkshire, England.

1. Go to FamilySearch.org – Historical Records
2. In the Place field type Wath upon Dearne
3. Press search

Yes you can search with just a place name!

I tried putting in a church name in addition to the place such as St Mary, Nottingham – and it searched for that too

Advanced search let me select a particular event such as Birth, Marriage, Death or Residence.

Some searches allow for a range of years asking for a From and To year.  Other places you give a year and then plus and minus.  If you select the middle year of your range the plus and minus go to 20 years which would result in a 40 year range.

Having found I could search just for Wath upon Dearne I thought I would try for one of my surnames in that parish so I entered Birks in the Last Name field, set the Event to marriage and quickly found my ancestor’s marriage in 1816. Henry Birks married Esther Bintcliffe.  Click on Henry’s name and you see the batch number and the source film.  Using the Library Catalog with the film number I found the source to be a Bishop’s Transcript.

After doing a search, notice that in the lower left that there is a list of Categories. These are filters that you can select. If you don’t select Event Marriages before searching then you can filter to Births and Christenings or Marriages – and in brackets you are told how many records there are.

Now I know, this search engine is not perfect.  Show me one that is!  I am still learning how to use the new search engine.   I know that we are not familiar with it and some of us want to go back to what we know . . .  – and you can if you need to!  I found myself having lots of fun trying all the options in the Historical Records search tool.

I know that FamilySearch would appreciate your suggestions for improvement.

There are still some things missing from the new site – see the document “Adjusting to the New Version of www.familysearch.org” – directions to get the document were in the 9 January article.  Searching in the Pedigree Resource File still is not yet available on the new version of FamilySearch – but we are told it is coming.

To me the searches seem quick.  They allow all sorts of filtering of initial results. I am enjoying learning how to search Historical Records.

There is lots for us to explore and to learn!

 

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