Between the script and the detailed description of the demo, you should be in a good position to answer the survey questions without the need to see the video.

Take the Survey!

Please take a few minutes to complete a survey about citing online genealogy sources.

• Click Here to take survey for individual genealogists or family historians
• Click Here to take survey for companies and organizations that provide genealogy software or services

SCRIPT:

Sooner or later anyone doing genealogy or family history research will meet up with the challenge of source citations. Some will immediately dismiss the topic and move on. Others will find the topic too big of a challenge to even try. Still others will set out with the best of intentions but will get bogged down in the complexity. The numbers that face the learning curve of source citations and conquer its intimidating slope are relatively few.

This has lead many to believe that citing sources is only for the professional genealogist. You may hear them say: “I’m just a personal family historian, no need to cite my sources.” The last time most of us were asked to create a bibliography or cite a source was for a paper we wrote in high school or college.

Researchers at every level should seek for credibility in their research. How else will we be able to separate fact from fiction? Citations are a minimum for our work to be considered as credible. The question is not “do we need to cite sources?” its “how do we make citing sources achievable by all?”

Currently citing sources is just too difficult. In recent years this is getting easier with the creation of genealogy citation guides, quick sheets, and software. But it needs to be even easier still.

There is another problem when it comes to online genealogy database websites like FamilySearch, Ancestry, Footnote, WorldVitalRecords, GenSeek and others. Similar sources on each of these websites have different citation formats or even no citations at all.

The amount of genealogy information currently on the internet is like a swimming pool full and in just a few years that will grow to an ocean full. To avoid adding more confusion to an already confusing situation, there needs to be standardized citations across these genealogy database websites.

In this demonstration I would like to show how easy it can be to cite online sources in your desktop genealogy software. What I am showing is prototype code. I am using RootsMagic 4 because of its support for citation templates from Elizabeth Shown Mills’ Evidence Explained. Other desktop genealogy applications that support these templates are: Legacy Family Tree 7 and Family Tree Maker 2009.

First I will create a new database in RootsMagic and will go ahead and close it. Now I will visit a sample genealogy website that contains some information on my ancestor, Worth Tucker. This website represents one of the larger online genealogy database sites mentioned earlier or could be a site containing someone’s personal research. On this site we find information about Worth Tucker’s property ownership in Elmo, Emery County, Utah. There is an extract from the book, A History of Emery County, as well as images of the book’s cover, title page, copyright page, and page 179. Notice also that there is a source citation for the book following a format in Evidence Explained.

Because the website contains the citation and supporting documents, I could use my desktop software to create a person entry for Worth and a fact or event entry for property ownership. I would then create a source and detail entry for the citation and link it to the event. I could also download the images to my computer and associate them to the source. But that is even more complicated than it needs to be.

This website supports a “Quick Cite” feature that allows easy import of the citation and associated files into my desktop genealogy software. When I click the button, the information is downloaded to my computer and the import begins. Since I have other genealogy software installed on my computer, I will be asked to select which program to use. In just a few seconds the information will be imported into my software and when I open my database then I will be able to see all the information properly cited.

Here is my entry for Worth Tucker showing the property fact. This fact has one source following the “Book, Basic format” template from Evidence Explained. The template fields are filled out correctly. Also imported was the source media. Here you find the three images for the source and here the image for the page that was cited. It even imported the extracted text from the source.

Now that is the way that citation of online sources should be done!

Is this a feature that interests you?

The technology to do this exists right now.

What is needed is for us to speak up and let the creators of our genealogy software and the online database websites know that this is a feature that we want. When the genealogy community unites to petition for records preservation and access, numbers count. The same is true when we want solutions to difficult challenges like source citation.

Contact the companies and organizations whose products and services you use. Let them know what you want. Send them a link to this video. Share this with friends and associates via e-mail, social networking sites or blogs.

Another way to participate is to complete a 5-minute survey that describes your level of interest in such a feature. The results will be shared with any individual, organization or company that completes the survey.

She explains the issues clearly and interviews genealogy blogger, Stephen Danko to get his opinion. Lisa also gives the outcome of her interview requests with Ancestry and World Vital Records.

I was excited to hear the interview with Stephen as I have been an admirer of his work for years ever since the Genealogy Guys first mentioned him on their podcast.  Stephen’s genealogy blog is in actuality an online research log where he posts document images, transcriptions and translations from his research. Like all genealogists should do, he cites all sources following Evidence Explained. In fact, I had his website in mind when I created the sample site used in the video. For many months, whenever I visited his blog I would imagine a Download link next to each of his source citations. Stephen is somebody I would love to meet. Maybe NGS 2010 in SLC?

Lisa, thanks for getting the word out.  This is truly a grassroots effort and I cannot do it on my own.  Keep spreading the word and contact the providers of the software and services you use.

Thank you!

Today company CEO, Paul Allen, tweeted (posted on Twitter) that he is beginning the definition phase of a new Chief Genealogy Officer (CGO) position.  One of the main responsibilities of this new position will be to “help manage GenSeek–[a] directory of all the world’s genealogy sources.” 

Yesterday Mr. Allen confirmed the speculation that GenSeek is the realization of the partnership between FamilyLink.com and FamilySearch to update the Family History Library catalog with Web 2.0 features.  These features include community contributed catalog entries and digitized sources. The release is planned for the next 2 months or so and I would expect to see a job posting before then.

The fact that FamilyLink.com is creating this position must mean that it expects GenSeek to be a big part of its service offering and  a key element to the company’s success. 

Only one company that I know has a similar C-level genealogy position.  It is Ancestry.com which in January 2007 appointed Megan Smolenyak Smolenyak as its Chief Family Historian.

Predictions anyone? 

• Elizabeth Shown Mills?
• Loretto Dennis Szucs?
• Kory Meyerink?
• Geoff Rasmussen?

As 2008 closes, we stop to ponder what awaits genealogy in 2009.  In coming up with this list, I have no insider information.  I simply looked at the information publically available and tried to determine what is possible or likely for the upcoming year. 

So here is my list of 9 genealogy predictions for 2009:

1. Two more desktop genealogy applications will support source citation templates from Elizabeth Shown Mills’ Evidence Explained. Currently Legacy 7 and RootsMagic 4 support this. The other two might likely be Family Tree Maker and The Master Genealogist.
2. One major online database (Ancestry, WorldVitalRecords, FamilySearch, Footnote) will announce upcoming support for Evidence Explained source citations.  Other sites will soon follow with their own announcements.
3. FamilySearch Research Wiki will grow to over 30,000 content pages (excluding talk and stub pages) by the end of the year. As of 28 December 2008, there were 12,573 content pages.
4. FamilySearch will announce a replacement for GEDCOM. GEDCOM will still be supported for many years as software will support it as well as the newer format. Reasons for the new format will be to better support source citations and media.
5. I hope I am wrong about this one, but with the current economic downturn we could see financial pressure force one of the more-recently-started genealogy companies to merge with or be acquired by another company.  Worse case scenario, it could go bankrupt.
6. Many more genealogy societies will join the social networking site, Facebook, by adding a group page. Searching groups today for “genealogical society | genealogy society” (the pipe symbol “|” means “OR”) returns 80 results. I wouldn’t be surprised if by the end of 2009 the total was over 200.
7. More genealogy applications will be available for the iPod Touch and the iPhone. Currently the iTunes App Store only lists three applications: MobileFamilyTree, FamViewer, and Shrubs.  This last holiday season, the iPod Touch was a hot item.  I wonder how many genealogists own one now.
8. Through blogs and podcasts, genealogists will hear more about the benefits of Web 3.0 (also called the Semantic Web) and how it applies to genealogy.
9. Genealogists are puzzle solvers when it comes to researching their family history, but do they play games?  I expect to see a genealogy-related game released in 2009.  It could be a casual game for Facebook or something more interactive for the Wii.  How about a Mii Familii Trii?  The game might teach research-related concepts (citation, transcription, etc) or (via GEDCOM import) put your ancestors in the game. 

How about you?  What do you think genealogy will be like in 2009?  Don’t be shy about posting a comment.

This time next year we will revisit this list and see how well the predictions compare with reality.

Although this was disappointing, I see this as an opportunity for the various genealogy and family history magazines to contact Barnes & Noble and get their magazines listed. I am not sure what the trade-offs would be to have your magazine included on the Barnes & Noble site, but it might just be worth it for the extended exposure.  The following print magazines come to mind that could be included on this site:

• Internet Genealogy
• Family Chronicle 
• Discovering Family History
• History
• Family Tree Magazine
• Ancestry Magazine
• The Everton Genealogical Helper Magazine
• The American Genealogist

This list could be expanded to include magazines published by organizations such as the National Genealogial Society (NGS Quarterly / NGS News Magazine), Association of Professional Genealogists (APG Quarterly), and New England Historic Genealogical Society (The NEHG Register).

It didn’t take much time on the site to notice that this online newsstand didn’t just provide access to 1,000 print subscriptions but also 500 digital subscriptions and 12,000 single issue back issues in digital format.  This is good news for a digital-only publication such as Digital Genealogist that is looking to increase it subscriber base.

Since I didn’t find any magazines using “genealogy” as a search term, I decided to search for “history”.  This returned 27 items:

The results included magazines about American, natural, military, and aviation history including 3 dedicated to the Civil War.  Besides these results, I found 2 that dealt with family history.  The first is a one issue subscription to The Computer Active Ultimate Guide to Family History and the other is Family Tree Magazine.  If you are interested in subscribing to Family Tree Maker, you will get a better deal from Barnes & Noble ($21.96) compared to $24.00 on the Family Tree Magazine website. A search using “family” did not return any additional genealogy magazines besides the two already listed.

Not sure what kind of connections the makers of Family Tree Magazine have to be the only multiple-issue genealogy/family history magazine listed at Barnes & Noble, but hopefully we will see some of the others listed soon. Having multiple genealogy magazines listed on one site would be very helpful to genealogists and family historians who want to subscribe to genealogy publications and want to comparison shop. The Barnes & Noble Online Magazine Store allows readers to rate and review the magazines. This will help others pick the magazine(s) that are right for them.

One point that I brought up in today’s visit that is an issue with not just Footnote, but also FamilySearch, Ancestry, World Vital Records, and other online database/document sites is that there is a lack of consistency with source citations.  For example, the same census document could have different citations on different sites and none of the citations follow the format in either of Elizabeth Shown Mills’ works: Evidence! or Evidence Explained.  When I download an image from one of these sites, I should get automatic source citation in my desktop genealogy application as well as additional details such as source provenance.  It should be very easy.  To modify a phrase from an action movie: “With great source repositories, comes great responsibility.”

 It is very encouraging to see companies like Footnote take an interest in what its members and potential members care about.  I was impressed by the Footnote team and site and get the feeling that the innovation hasn’t stopped yet.

As an added bonus, I got to meet Dick Eastman.  Overall, what a great experience!