• It really ramps up competition in online genealogy. Right now, Ancestry.com is the only site that offers the entire US census digitized and indexed. I wonder if/how this will affect Ancestry.com’s IPO process—the census claim is probably a major selling point to potential investors.

• Like Footnote's other historical records, its US census collection will be interactive. Members can add comments and insights to a census record, upload and attach photos or documents, create a Footnote Page and identify relatives found in the census by clicking an I’m Related button.
  

Ancestry.com’s new Member Connect features offer interactivity, but not quite to the same extent as Footnote.

Thursday, October 29, 2009 12:27:57 PM (GMT Standard Time, UTC+00:00)    Comments [0]

• Our online Hispanic Heritage Toolkit has resources and tips for learning about Mexican, Spanish, Portuguese, Basque, Central and South American ancestors.
  

See our advice for research in the Caribbean, too.

• Visit the free FamilySearch Record Search Pilot to look for ancestors in the 1930 Mexican census; Mexican baptisms, marriages and burials; and church records from several Mexican states. (Scroll down on this page to see the list).

The site also has a growing collection of church, civil registration and census records from the Caribbean and Central and South America.

• Ancestry.com and the free Ancestry Library Edition (see if it’s available at your library) have border-crossing records from Mexico covering 1903 to 1957. These records are on microfilm at the National Archives.
  
  
• Those with Mexican ancestry can use our Mexican Research Guide, available as a $4 download in our online store.
  

• The Smithsonian lists some events and educator resources, and takes you on a virtual Hispanic heritage cultural tour.

• PBS is airing "Latin Music USA," a documentary series, Mondays, Oct. 12 and 19, from 9 to 11 p.m. ET.

Tuesday, September 15, 2009 2:50:25 PM (GMT Daylight Time, UTC+01:00)    Comments [3]

• The National Genealogical Society (NGS) has launched a blog called UpFront With NGS, which will complement the society’s monthly e-mail newsletter of the same name. News will be posted regularly on the blog, so you don’t have to wait for the e-mail, and you can leave comments on the blog posts.
  

• Ancestry.com is hosting a free webinar to demo its recently released Family Tree Maker 2010 genealogy software. The webinar is Sept. 30 at 8pm EDT. Learn more about the webinar and link to the registration on Ancestry.com’s blog.
  
  
• The McMullen Museum of Art at Boston College has a Web site companion to its special exhibit of the Becker Collection: Drawings of the Civil War Era. The drawings by Joseph Becker and others from Frank Leslie’s Illustrated Weekly depict the Civil War, construction of railroads, Chinese in the West, Indian wars, the Chicago fire and more. You can browse drawings by date, place, subject, artist or reference number.
  
  
• Irish-ancestored people, take note: As posted by Dick Eastman, all counties have been added to the National Archives of Ireland's 1911 census Web site. Later this year, you’ll start seeing 1901 census records. The 1901 and 1911 censuses are the only surviving full Irish censuses open for research. Read what’s special about Irish censuses on Dick’s blog.
  
  
• Last, I wanted to point out this fun post by Randy Seaver (a re-post of his earlier post, which I missed the first time around) with links to lists of funny/strange place names.
  

Friday, September 11, 2009 4:16:06 PM (GMT Daylight Time, UTC+01:00)    Comments [0]

• Subscription family tree site One Great Family exhibited this year as part of a new marketing effort to reach the genealogy community.

One Great Family automatically merges trees when it finds the identical person on both, which sounds a bit scary—but where the trees differ, the site maintains the differences and each member sees the version of the tree he believes is correct. President Rob Armstrong says no one can change your view of your tree, but everyone can see your version and accept your view if they choose. A subscription costs $59.95 annually; a free one-week trial offer is available.

• A new company called Geneartogy uses your ancestors’ names and photos to create frameable, decorative trees on canvas (you also can get the designs on smaller plaques). Prices range from a $98 extra-small plaque to a $408 extra-large canvas, with an additional cost for framing.

• Next year’s FGS conference is slated for August 18-21 in Knoxville, Tenn., home of the East Tennessee Historical Society’s excellent museum and research library (and close to the Great Smoky Mountains National Park). Many classes will cover the historic and cultural roots of Tennessee and Kentucky, as well as the in- and out-migrations of those states.

(The 2010 National Genealogical Society conference, by the way, is in Salt Lake City, so you could double up on a trip to the Family History Library.)

• If you’re new to genealogy conferences, you might be curious about the long panel of ribbons dangling from some attendees’ name badges, like so:

(This is podcast host Dear Myrtle’s badge.) Ribbons designate society memberships, honors and more. All registrants got an “Ancestry.com member” ribbon (whether or not they actually were members) and first-time attendees got “First FGS Conference.” FGS board members, speakers and  genealogical societies delegates received ribbons. I got “Podcast Fan” and “Keeping up With Blogs” at a social networking forum. Some highly involved folks had to take special measures to secure their ribbons:

Wednesday, September 09, 2009 4:31:00 PM (GMT Daylight Time, UTC+01:00)    Comments [0]

It turned out the meeting was more review than news, the company's lawyers having nixed any “forward thinking statements” in anticipation of its IPO.

But I guess a review couldn’t hurt once in awhile, especially with, as content manager Gary Gibb conceded, just-released databases quickly overshadowing ones released just before them, significant additionsbeing termed mere “updates” on the list of recently added content, and some collections (such as audio recordings of oral histories) drowning in the sea of databases.

Key improvements for this year have been:

• Member connect
  

• An enhanced image viewer, which lets you view the record image and the index on the same page. This is available in preview mode for some censuses, including the 1880 US census. It also lets members build a better index by adding alternate information for most fields. The additions are viewable immediately to other people, and they’re searchable within about three weeks.

• Ancestry member trees have a new person and tree viewer that are easier to navigate

• The lifespan search filter, which has eliminated some irrelevant results. A lot still needs to be improved, says VP of product Eric Shoup. He says Ancestry.com won’t “kill” the old search, but wants to create a search experience that combines what works about both the old and new searches. Potential improvements include more control over searches on a place and name, improving the search for an individual collection, making it easier to browse records and changing the search algorithm to deliver relevant results.

• Family Tree Maker 2010 was launched in August.  Among other improvements, it lets you download trees into the program from Ancestry Member trees.

Friday, September 04, 2009 2:20:01 PM (GMT Daylight Time, UTC+01:00)    Comments [0]

We'll keep keeping you updated with conference news.

Thursday, September 03, 2009 3:27:06 AM (GMT Daylight Time, UTC+01:00)    Comments [1]

• Hundreds of genealogists—your truly included—are packing their bags for the Federation of Genealogical Societies Conference in Little Rock, Ark., Sept. 2 to 5. I’ll write more about the conference in a separate post next week, but in the mean time, you can check out the conference Web site and blog.

• The National Archives’ marriage records (1815 to 1866) from the Virginia Field Office of the Bureau of Refugees, Freedmen and Abandoned Lands (Freedmen’s Bureau) have been digitized and are now available free at the FamilySearch record search pilot site.

• Subscription genealogy Web site Ancestry.com and its related international sites will be down for scheduled maintenance for about three hours starting Tuesday, Sept. 1 at 1 a.m. Mountain Time. Portions of RootsWeb, Genealogy.com, MyFamily.com and FamilyTreeMaker.com—which live on Ancestry.com servers—also will be unavailable. 
  

• Mark your calendars for National Museum Day Sept. 26, when hundreds of museums across the country will offer free general admission to you and a guest when you present a Museum Day admission card, downloadable from this site.

• A Deerfield, Ill., documentarian has created a show called “The Legend Seekers,” which traces family legends of regular people. You can submit your family story at LegendSeekers.com, see others' stories and get research tips. Chicago-area residents can watch an episode on WTTW Channel 11 Aug. 30 at 12:30 p.m. and 3:30 a.m. Aug. 31. (It’ll also run on WTTW Prime—Comcast Channel 243—at 9:30 p.m. Aug. 31, and 4:30 and 9:30 a.m. Sept. 1.)

Friday, August 28, 2009 4:20:36 PM (GMT Daylight Time, UTC+01:00)    Comments [0]

• better tools to create family books from information and photos in your tree
  
  
• the ability to create and export slide shows from photos in your tree
  
  
• scanner support that lets you add photos to your tree right from your scanner and organize them into categories at the same time
  
  
• the ability to track relatives’ migration paths by mapping locations of events such as births, marriages and deaths with Microsoft Bing Maps
  
  
• an improved relationship calculator that lets you view relationships between any two people in your tree
  
  
• a new timeline report and updates to the family group sheet and genealogy reports
  
  
• standard source templates that make it easier to cite a variety of types of sources
  
  
• extended-family birthday and anniversary calendars

Wednesday, August 19, 2009 4:57:44 PM (GMT Daylight Time, UTC+01:00)    Comments [9]

• Brooklyn Hebrew Orphan Asylum Records (1878 to 1934): admission applications and discharge ledgers
  
  
• Selected Naturalization Records, New York City (1816 to 1845): declarations of intention for New York County
  
  
• New York Hebrew Orphan Asylum Records (1860 to 1934): admission applications and discharge ledgers
  
  
• Industrial Removal Office Records (1899 to 1922): records of Jews who were assisted in relocating from various countries for safety
  
  
• Selected Insolvent Debtor’s Cases (1787 to 1861): about 2,000 cases
  
  
• Selected Mayor’s Court Cases, New York (1674 to 1860): 6,000 briefs that include summons, complaints, affidavits and jury lists

Monday, August 03, 2009 2:39:49 PM (GMT Daylight Time, UTC+01:00)    Comments [0]

• First, a reminder that if you plan to subscribe to Footnote or renew your subscription, stop procrastinating. The $59.95 annual subscription sale ends at midnight tonight (July 31). Also tomorrow, the membership rate goes from $69.95 to $79.95 per year.

• Another reminder for those who’ve been meaning to search the Caribbean slave records on Ancestry.com—the free period ends tonight. More on this collection here.
  

• Speaking of Ancestry.com, the new Member Connect features—which let you comment on and correct records, as well as get in touch with other members—went live this week. Click here for more on Member Connect.

• The FGS 09 conference is just a month away, Sept. 2-5 in Little Rock, Ark. Get news updates and registration information from the conference blog, and when you’re there, stop by to see us at the Family Tree Magazine booth (#407).
  

• This from Dick Eastman’s blog: The British national archives and UK-based family history site Findmypast.com are giving seven repositories in England and Wales free online access to the recently completed 1911 census records. See Dick's post for the list of archives.

Friday, July 31, 2009 7:19:19 PM (GMT Daylight Time, UTC+01:00)    Comments [0]

• New records this week on the free FamilySearch Record Search Pilot  include an index to Cheshire, England, Non-conformist records (1671 to 1900), and index to the 1895 Minnesota state census, and images for the 1905 New York state census (the index is still in progress).

New indexing projects are underway for Italy, New Zealand, Perú and the United States; volunteers who can help with foreign language projects are needed. Go to the FamilySearch Indexing site for more information.

• Library and Archives Canada’s online Canadian Genealogy Center—one of our 101 Best Web Sites for 2009—released an index of 206,731 Canadians naturalized from 1915 to 1932. You can use the information in the database to request the original naturalization records.

• The International Association of Jewish Genealogists conference is coming right up Aug. 2-7 in Philadelphia. Besides genealogy classes and an exhibit hall, you can use a Resource Room stocked with research materials and computers. Extracurriculars include walking tours, bus tours and cemetery research trips. Visit the conference Web site for registration information.

• A Twitter retweet from @mdiane_rogers led us to a free database from professional genealogy firm Price & Associates of indentured immigrants who arrived between 1607 and 1820. You can search by first and last name, date and place of of birth, and other parameters. Sources of the information are listed on the site.
  

• Ancestry.com has upgraded its “hinting engine” for FamilyTreeMaker. Now a faster, higher-capacity engine will automatically search Ancestry.com and display a leaf next to a name in FamilyTreeMaker's pedigree and detail views if there's a potential match. The new engine also searches Ancestry Member Trees instead of One World Tree data.
  

Friday, July 24, 2009 7:25:54 PM (GMT Daylight Time, UTC+01:00)    Comments [1]

• The Generations Network, parent company of Ancestry.com, has a poignant new ad campaign you’ll probably catch on some media or other (if you’re worried you’ll miss it, see it on Ancestry.com’s YouTube channel). 

• Ancestry.com also has developed an Ancient Ancestry Finder that guesses your haplogroup (ancestral origins) based on a few questions. It’s fun, and the haplogroups have cute names such as "Boatbuilders" and "Inventors," but keep in mind it's not necessarily accurate. At the end, you get a pitch to buy a $79 DNA test to determine if the Finder is correct.

• If you’ve been thinking of trying the databases at NewEnglandAncestors.org, now might be the time. The New England Historic Genealogical Society is offering $15 off new memberships during July.

• This week, FamilySearch enhanced its free Record Search Pilot with 12 new collections, which have records from Argentina, Australia, Mexico, Netherlands, and Spain. New United States collections were added for Delaware, Massachusetts, New Mexico, Rhode Island and Utah.

International indexing projects now underway involve records from the Czech Republic; Baden, Germany; and South Africa—click here if you’re interested in volunteering.

• Following on the heels of Footnote’s partnership with newspaper publisher Gannett, ProQuest announced it’s adding Gannett papers to its Newsstand data service (offered through libraries). ProQuest will offer the papers back to 1977; Footnote is digitizing older editions.

• The Houston Metropolitan Research Center (HMRC) at the Houston Public Library's downtown Julia Ideson Building is changing its research hours during a renovation. Now through Aug. 31, HMRC is open Mondays, Thursdays and Saturdays from 9 a.m. to 6 p.m. Sept. 1 to Oct. 31, it'll be open by appointment—call (832) 393-1313 to make one.

Thursday, July 02, 2009 4:18:55 PM (GMT Daylight Time, UTC+01:00)    Comments [2]

• When you search and view a record, you'll see member names of Ancestry.com users who’ve edited the record (for example, by entering an alternate transcription of the name), or saved the record to a tree or shoebox.
  

You’ll also get suggestions for related message boards (such as the Roberts surname board for your search on Jeremiah Roberts) and people who’ve listed related research interests in their profiles (for example, others looking for Robertses in Muncie, Ind.). Then you can visit that person’s tree or contact him through the site.

• A tab in your Ancestry.com member tree will show you other members’ ancestors who may match people in your tree. If the match looks promising, a Connect button links the trees and shows you more details—including buttons highlighting new or conflicting information. You can remove the connection altogether, or click the buttons to decide what to do with each fact: keep the new information out of your tree, it as an alternate fact, or use it to replace your information.
  

You also can contact the member with the matching tree through Ancestry.com to thank him or ask about any errors. This way, the “good data” in Ancestry.com trees will become more prominent than erroneous data, Graham says.

• As you link to others’ trees, you build a network of researchers—called “connections”—who share your genealogical interests. More tabs show you your connections’ activity related to people common to both trees, including updated information and records and new records added.

Wednesday, June 17, 2009 6:21:07 PM (GMT Daylight Time, UTC+01:00)    Comments [5]

• The National Archives of Ireland free 1911 census site added records for Cork, Donegal, Galway, King's County and Wexford to those already online (from Antrim, Down, Dublin and Kerry).

Get more details on the site in this Genealogy Insider blog post.

• Millions of the US Citizenship and Immigration Services' alien case files (also called A-files) dating from 1944 and later were signed over to the National Archives (records will be relocated to the National Archives’ San Francisco and Kansas City facilities later this year).

Henceforth, USCIS can forward files 100 years after the birth date of the person whose file it is. The USCIS press office tells me you’ll still be able to order the 1944-to-1951 A-files through the USCIS Genealogy Program (through which you also can order naturalizations and alien registrations).

• Subscription newspaper and records service GenealogyBank added or expanded newspaper collections from 22 states. The new content is listed by state here, or go here to view the complete list of newspapers.
  

• Subscription site Ancestry.com is letting you preview upcoming changes to the family tree pages—to see them, click Family Trees on Ancestry.com's home page, then click the light blue bar at the top that says “Check out the new look.” (You must have a tree on Ancestry.com to see the preview.)
  

The new look will make pages load faster, be easier to navigate and display more information, says Kenny Freestone on the Ancestry.com blog. Randy Seaver at Genea-Musings describes the changes in detail.

Friday, June 05, 2009 6:46:42 PM (GMT Daylight Time, UTC+01:00)    Comments [1]

• New content on subscription site World Vital Records includes pre-1700 New England marriages and names of about 8,500 Union soldiers who were for various reasons omitted from the original Roll of Honor (a listing of Union burials in national cemeteries).

One addition, the Protestation Returns, which record religious loyalty oaths from males in England from 1641 to 1642, is free for 10 days (from May 28).

• Ancestry.com passed 8 billion records in its databases (a record in this case is a name, not a document). The vital records collection is biggest, with 1,100 million records and 38.9 million document images; followed by censuses at 900 million records and 27.7 million images.
  

On deck at Ancestry.com: Improving the census collection (1790 through 1900 censuses should be updated by year’s end), newspapers from 50 new cities and early city directories.

• FamilySearch has added volunteer indexing projects from around the world, including Argentina; British Columbia, Canada; France; and NorthDakota, South Carolina, Ohio and Indiana. For details about the records and years being indexed, see the FamilySearch Indexing Web site.
  

Click here to volunteer to index some records.

Friday, May 29, 2009 6:35:26 PM (GMT Daylight Time, UTC+01:00)    Comments [0]

• Genealogy Freelancers: This site lets you post your project details and get bids from professionals around the world.

• Genlighten: Here, you also can collect bids for research tasks. The focus here is on lookups, record retrieval and similar services.

• Random Acts of Genealogical Kindness: These volunteers have signed on to do simple research favors for free (except expenses such as mileage and photocopying fees). You’re encouraged to return the favor by helping out someone else.

• Repositories sometimes keep lists of nearby professional researchers (contact the genealogy department). For example, if you want to hire someone to copy your ancestor’s Civil War pension file, see the National Archives’ list of local researchers by topic and location.
  
  
• For long or more-complicated research projects, you can find directories of professional genealogists on the Association for Professional Genealogists Web site, ProGenealogists, and the Board for Certification of Genealogists.

Tuesday, May 19, 2009 3:59:01 PM (GMT Daylight Time, UTC+01:00)    Comments [4]

A lot of numbers were tossed out, which the company uses to understand which Ancestry.com databases and features you use most. For example, after member-to-member messaging was moved onto the site (so instead of just sending an e-mail to another user, you send a message that’s stored in the person’s in-box on the site), members sent 25 percent more messages. Responses increased 35 percent.

Some interesting stats involved the new search interface vs. the old one. Use of the two is evenly split, with longer-time members sticking with the old interface and newer members favoring the new interface (I have to wonder if they just haven’t discovered the old search yet). “Old-search searchers” do an average of 37 searches a day, and “new-search searchers” do an average of 21 searches per day.

The guy in charge of developing a newer new search, Tony Macklin, was frank about what’s wrong with the new search (this is from my scribbled notes, so it’s not a direct quote): queries don’t always return consistent results between the two platforms, you get too many irrelevant results, browsing by place is too difficult, and the individual database search templates aren’t as customized (Macklin uses the old search for individual databases). His examples were coupled with user comments.

He said changing the search interface without changing the actual search was a mistake, and the goal is to eventually bring together the best parts of both platforms. 

Content-wise, Ancestry.com has grown to 8 billion names. Family trees recently passed the census as the most-used data set.

Some upcoming additions include the WWII “Old Man’s Draft” for Illinois, newspapers from 30 new cities, Jewish records with two new yet-to-be-announced partners, Navy cruise books, pre-1850 city directories and vital records.

In a large reception Ancestry.com held last night for conference attendees, senior VP Andrew Waite said the company is aiming for a balance of 30 percent upgrading current collections and 70 percent adding new ones—but that this figure has been more like 50/50 during the last few months.

Ruth Daniels from the UK office talked about negotiating digitization agreements in other countries, where records may be widely dispersed at state and local repositories, and laws and cultural attitudes differ around who should have access to records. For example, public access laws make UK records easier to acquire; Italy’s decentralized archives make things more challenging there. The just-released German telephone directories and records from the London Metropolitan Archives, launched in March and still being added, are two successes.

Friday, May 15, 2009 2:28:46 PM (GMT Daylight Time, UTC+01:00)    Comments [1]

• Subscription genealogy site Ancestry.com launched a collection of German phone directories dating from 1915 to 1981. The books, which are, of course, in German, list names and addresses of more than 35 million people who lived in Germany’s major cities, as well as many businesses. 
  

• British subscription and pay-per-view site FindMyPast.com added merchant seaman crew indexes with 270,000 names of seafarers between 1860 and 1913. British ships created these lists every six months, including everyone from captains to able seamen, from engine room staff to stewardesses.

• The 1916 census of Canada is now available free at Family History Centers through their on-site Ancestry.com service. (Meaning this census isn’t on the FamilySearch pilot site—you must go to a Family History Center to search it.)
  

• The National Archives granted its first Excellence in Genealogy Awards to Myron McGhee of Decatur, GA, who took first place, and Stephanie D. Smith of Richtor Park, IL, who took second. Read about their entries on the archives’ Web site.
  

• The heritage travel Web site Go With a Purpose launched a new section called Go Connect, where users can upload photos with their reviews of historic destinations. Learn more on the site’s blog.

• A late addition: The New England Historic Genealogical Society is adding digitized back issues of the journal The American Genealogist, to its subscription databases at NewEnglandAncestors.org. Vols. 1 through 8 (published as Families of Ancient New Haven) and Volumes 9–13 (dated from 1933 through 1937), are available now in separate databases. Additional volumes will be added. NEHGS memberships start at $75.

Friday, May 08, 2009 7:02:07 PM (GMT Daylight Time, UTC+01:00)    Comments [0]