James Tanner's Blog – February 2010 Archive (16)

WorldCat.org is a major international connection to over 10,000

libraries worldwide and catalogs over 1.5 billion items. Google Books

contains over 10,000,000 digitized books and magazines. WorldCat.org

and Google Books are now interlinked. If you search for a book on

Google Books and find the item, one of the options is to find the item

in a library. Clicking on this option gives you a link to… Continue

An

article in Mormon Times, opens the door for almost the first time,

to a main stream airing of some of the most glaring problems with New FamilySearch.

Although the article is low key, it points out some of more difficult

issues with the program. If you have been following the development of

the program at all, you will… Continue

The Library of Congress, now over 200

years old, is recognized as the largest library in the United States and

has claims to being the largest library in the world. Its collections

are described as follows:



In 1992, the Library acquired its 100 millionth item. The collections now include

approximately fifteen million books, thirty-nine million manuscripts,

thirteen million photographs, four million maps, more… Continue

New FamilySearch

(NFS) is

much more than a simple database of names, it is a revolutionary way of

presenting genealogical information that has far reaching and even

revolutionary consequences to the way family information is stored,

displayed and maintained. One aspect of the program (if you can call it

that) is the extensive help system.… Continue

Sometimes it take a year or two (or more) for the nature of a major

change to become evident in any human activity. Genealogy has always

been a very narrow and some-what esoteric study. But now, FamilySearch's

New FamilySearch

(NFS)

database constitutes a revolutionary challenge to… Continue

The newest addition to FamilySearch's Record Search are the Norfolk, Church of England Parish Registers

from 1538 to 1900 and the Brazil, Paraiba region Civil Registrations from

1870 to 2006.

Read… Continue

I know it isn't his original quote, but Val D. Greenwood says, "A good cookbook does not make a good cook." (Greenwood, Val D. The Researcher's Guide to American Genealogy.

Baltimore, MD: Genealogical Pub. Co, 2000). Neither does good

genealogical instruction… Continue

FamilySearch's Record Search

has just added 16 counties to the Arkansas County Marriages. It has

also published the Mexico Catholic Church Records consolidating all of

the previously separately published Catholic Church records from

different areas in Mexico. Records from… Continue

There is a appropriate analogy to many of the questions I am asked at the Mesa Regional Family History Center, it is called building bridges

in the air. In genealogical terms it is called starting with the three

brothers that came from Ireland, Scotland, England, Germany, Norway or

where ever. Quoting from Val Greenwood, (Greenwood, Val D. The …

Continue

The thought occurred to me to try and determine how many digitized books are now (as of February, 2010) online. Then, I would try to

estimate/guess how many of those are genealogy related.

I realize that the task is likely impossible, but I would like to have some idea of the magnitude of the online book community. My first stop

is Google Books. It appears that Google doesn't… Continue

In years past when I lived in libraries (not literally), I spent huge amounts of time doing research. One of the most useful tools was to

read the card catalog. To do this, you needed the skill of flipping

through the cards very fast and also being able to read the information

in the split second the card was visible. The advantage of this type of

research was an overview of the target subject, with the result that I

often found…

Continue

Record Search Update England, Luxemburg, Netherlands, Colombia, and Spain

FamilySearch Record Search

continues to add huge collections of records from around the world. As

of February 6, 2010, the… Continue

Personal Ancestral File (PAF) is one of the most widely used lineage-linked genealogical database programs. I have not been able to find any statistics on the number of

actual users, but personal experience indicates that most of the

genealogists who have a program at all are using PAF.

Even if the genealogists have moved on to a commercially available

program, it is possible that their attitudes concerning files may have

been formed…

Continue

Wearing a flash drive around your neck on a strap has become the badge of the genealogist researcher. It is obvious that with ample storage space for most research needs in a conveniently small and light package, the flash drive is almost indispensable. But how reliable are they? Should flash drives be used for "long term" storage of data? What should I be using to archive my valuable digital files?
Read more...

During the past few days at the Mesa Regional Family History Center, we have had some lively discussions about transferring our genealogy files to work on a computer other than our own, particularly, bringing files to the Center for research purposes. This discussion brought up another old bugaboo, the illusion of security for backed up files.



The origin of this problem dates back into computer antiquity with the early versions of Personal Ancestral File. Primarily because of storage… Continue

Even if you have not had the opportunity to login to New FamilySearch, you may be interested in several new products that stand well on their own merits, irrespective of their affiliation with New FamilySearch. At the Family History Expo in Mesa, Arizona, I had a personal tour of the pre-release Family ChArtist program from Generation Maps from Janet Hovorka. I also enjoyed her presentation on New FamilySearch certified genealogy software.…

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