ThinkGenealogy

A few weeks ago I met with members of the Legacy Family Tree team and saw a preview of Legacy 7.  I am very impressed.  They have really taken source citation seriously and have done a remarkable job digesting the citation models in Elizabeth Shown Mill’s “Evidence Explained.”  With the amount of time and effort that Geoff has spent understanding that hefty volume, he is probably one of only a few experts on it.

I am excited for the chance to take if for a spin myself and see how it does for day to day use.

Many years ago I was (incorrectly) singing the words to the song, “Que, Sera, Sera” and my wife pointed out my humorous mistake.

Instead of singing:

Que Sera, Sera,
Whatever will be, will be
The future’s not ours, to see

I sang:

Que Sera, Sera,
Whatever will be, will be
The future’s not hard to see

This personal joke has been used many times since then and has never failed to deliver a cheerful effect.

I think that the author and design leader, Bill Buxton, would agree that the “future’s not hard to see.” In his book, “Sketching User Experiences: getting the design right and the right design,” Bill stresses the importance of looking at least 5 years down the road when designing user experiences and adds:

Now most people say that you cannot predict the future, much less five years out. They use this as an excuse for not making the effort, or even contemplating it. I believe that this reflects a lack of training, technique, or responsibility on the part of design or management. (page 209)

He then goes on to quote William Gibson from an NPR interview on 30 November 1999:

… the future is already here. It’s just not very evenly distributed.

Buxton gives two examples. The first computer mouse was built in 1964 but didn’t reach widespread use until about 1995 – 30 years later. The idea for the CD came around 1965 but it wasn’t until 25 years later in 1990 that the industry reached $1 billion. From idea, to design, to prototype, to first production, to ubiquity takes time.

Bill then makes this statement that I would like us to consider:

If history is any indication, we should assume that any technology that is going to have a significant impact over the next 10 years is already 10 years old. (page 215)

 This made me wonder if this could be applied to genealogy software. What has happened over the last 10 years that could affect the design and innovation of genealogy software over the next 10 years?

At first nothing came to mind, but then I thought of Elizabeth Shown Mills’ book, “Evidence! Citation and Analysis for the Family Historian” which was published in 1997. In 2007, the much expanded “Evidence Explained: Citing History Sources from Artifacts to Cyberspace” was released. We are now beginning to see specific examples of Elizabeth’s work showing up in genealogy software. In a podcast interview by Dick Eastman, Elizabeth Kelley Kerstens indicated that the software Clooz version 2.x was influenced by handouts she received from Elizabeth Shown Mills. Another example is from a podcast by DearMYRTLE where she interviews Geoff Rasmussen about Legacy version 7. In this interview, Geoff gives a sneak peek of one of the major new features which is source citation following the standard set by Elizabeth Shown Mills. There is still much work that needs to be done in this area such as online databases providing better source citations. I talk about this in my previous post about Jumping Curves. So you see, the future is not so hard to see.

Another area that I want to point out is the Genealogical Proof Standard which was also created in 1997 by the Board for Certification of Genealogists. Other than its use in the certification process, you don’t hear much about it. But this standard is useful to researchers of all levels to help them get as close to the truth as possible. At some point genealogy software designers and developers will realize this and incorporate it into future genealogy software.

There are probably many more examples of ideas, technology, and methodology that exists today that will help us better see the future of genealogy software.

What things should be added to this list?

As a genealogy community, I hope we aren’t thinking:

Que Sera, Sera,
Whatever will be, will be
The future’s not ours, to see

Share your thoughts as the future is ours to see.  I hope that is not hard to see.

According to Guy Kawasaki  (author, speaker, entrepreneur, venture capitalist, etc.) one key point to great innovation is “Jumping Curves” which means moving from the curve where everyone else is to a new curve.  The folks at WorldVitalRecords.com have been talking about this concept lately which is where I heard about it.  See ”How To Innovate And Change The World” by Whitney Ransom and “Jumping Curves At WorldVitalRecords.com and FamilyLink.com” by Yvette Arts.  The second article asks for suggestions about jumping curves.  The following is part of an e-mail that I sent in response:

I like the fact the WorldVitalRecords geocodes all records added to their site.  Why you are at it, why don’t you add source citations in metadata/xml form following the conventions in Elizabeth Shown Mills book, Evidence Explained: Citing History Sources from Artifacts to Cyberspace? 

Currently source citation is hard.  When it is available, it is in text format that must be copied and pasted into your genealogy program.  But source citation is vital so that proper evaluation of evidence can be done and so that constant re-examination of the same records can be avoided.  If when you click on a document to download the image, the link was instead something like an rss link that has metadata with it (think rss enclosure tag) and if that xml format were a standard then genealogy software could read the information, add the image to the application, and add the proper source citation.  What could be easier for a user than every time a document image is downloaded from an online database, the source was automatically cited?  The software developers would be half way there as they would then just need to add a way to manually add the same information for offline sources. 

The first analysis that needs to be done with a source is to determine if it is original or derivative.  The metadata could include this information already.  The next step would be to have the metadata for derivative sources include the source provenance all the way back to the original.  Who would be in a better position to know that than the site owner who negotiated with the owner of the source content?  This identification would then only have to be done once correctly and it would save many family historians/genealogists from doing the same work and sometimes incorrectly. 

Now the metadata would also be available to search engines and special source searches could be created to find and aggregate the information.  Think about what Google, Technorati, Digg, del.icio.us, Facebook or others could do with this type of information.

1. Creating a source citation metadata standard. 
2. Being the first records site to metadata source cite all their content. 
3. Making it extremely easy to cite online sources. 
4. Creating a whole new way to search for records. 

Now talk about jumping curves!

Some of these ideas I have shared before in Expanded Vision of Genealogy 2.0.

Happy curve jumping.

Is Genealogy 2.0 simply the application of Web 2.0 to genealogy or is it a separate wave of innovation in genealogy software?  The version number “2.0″ has been applied to the web and genealogy to indicate a “new release” or “major upgrade” to the way things were done before.  This article discusses Web 2.0, Genealogy 2.0, and something I call Web 2.0+Gen. 

Web 2.0

The term Web 2.0 has been around since 2004 and is defined by wikipedia as the:

“perceived second generation of web-based communities and hosted services — such as social-networking sites, wikis and folksonomies — which aim to facilitate collaboration and sharing between users”

There is much debate over the definition of Web 2.0 and what makes a website “Web 2.0″.  According to SEOmoz.org, some of the defining characteristics of Web 2.0 are:

• User generated and/or user influenced content
• Applications that use the Web (versus the desktop) as a platform, in innovative ways
• Similar visual design and shared functional languages
• Leveraging of popular trends, including blogging, social tagging, wikis, and peer-to-peer sharing
• Inclusion of emerging web technologies like RSS, AJAX, APIs (and accompanying mashups), Ruby on Rails and others
• Open source or sharable/editable frameworks in the form of user-oriented “create your own” APIs

Web 2.0 links:

• O’Reilly Radar - Web 2.0 Compact Definition: Trying Again
• SEOmoz’s Web 2.0 Awards
• WebTrends 2.0 - Web 2.0 Directory
• Pixel Acres - The Visual Design of Web 2.0
• Web Design from Scratch - Current Style in Web Design

Sample Sites:

• Flickr
• del.icio.us
• LinkedIn
• Wikipedia

Genealogy 2.0

When I search the internet for “genealogy 2.0″, I get a number of sites that talk about the application of Web 2.0 to genealogy.  These sites mention social networking and collaboration as key components of Genealogy 2.0.  One blog, The Plog: Pytlewski Log, states:

“traditionally genealogy 2.0 has only referred to the new internet based applications that are changing the way we collaborate as a genealogical community”

My view of Genealogy 2.0 is broader than Web 2.0 genealogy application or what I term, Web 2.0+Gen.  Maybe it is because I have developed both web applications and Windows client applications.  Maybe it is because I see so many areas for improvement and innovation in genealogy software and I don’t want to wait around for Genealogy 2.5 or 3.0.  Or maybe it is just the developer in me that wants to avoid tight coupling. But pairing Genealogy 2.0 with Web 2.0 excludes genealogy software that is not web-based.  It also seems to focus too much on what Web 2.0 is and not what Genealogy 2.0 could be.

Genealogy 2.0 links:

• Genealogy 2.0
• Family Matters

Sample Sites:

• FamilyLink
• Geni
• FamilyPursuit

Expanded View of Genealogy 2.0

Many of these ideas are not new, but have been in the genealogy community for years.  The time is ripe for them to materialize as software that will aid genealogists and family historians to do things that they have never been able to easily do before. 

An expanded view of Genealogy 2.0 includes the following characteristics:

• Social networking 
• Collaboration during research, analysis, and conclusions
• More than just sharing data and results
• Supports sources, information, evidence, and conclusions
• Document-centered data collection
• Standardized source citation (see Evidence Explained)
• Source citation as data not text
• Source provenance
• Information extraction
• Evidence evaluation and weight
• Conclusion recording
• Online data backup
• Community of researchers
• Online data storage or peer-to-peer offline storage
• Data linking and layering, not merging
• Expanded to include not only web-based applications but also desktop and mobile
• Modernizing of GEDCOM or replacement with XML-based format
• The ability to not do anything with genealogy for a year and then start right where I left off without any loss of information or momentum

Now the last point may just be my own personal wish list item, but if  a Genealogy 2.0 application included a place to put everthing and kept track of what I have done and what else needs to be done then it would be much easier to continue where I left off.

Genealogy 2.0 Expanded links:

• Source-Centricity
• Evidence Explained: Citing History Sources from Artifacts to Cyberspace by Elizabeth Shown Mills
• The BCG Genealogical Standards Manual

I look forward to your comments and ideas about Genealogy 2.0.

I just received my copy of Evidence Explained: Citing History Sources from Artifacts to Cyberspace by Elizabeth Shown Mills and I am so excited!  I look forward to studying it in detail.  I am very interested in how its contents can be applied to genealogy software.  What if this book were used as a requirements document for software?  If the knowledge and best practices from this book were coded into a genealogy application, then genealogists and family historians from beginners to professionals would speak the same language.  What if all genealogy software encoded these same best practices and they became a standard feature just like the pedigree chart?  That would be some real innovation. 

The book can be purchased from Genealogical Publishing Company.

The LibraryThing site allows you to catalog your books online and connect with people who share your same interests.  I have been catching up on past issues of the GenealogyGuys podcast and George and Drew have been talking a lot about LibraryThing.  So today I decided to try it out.

The site is simple to understand and I was able to quickly register and add a few books by just typing in the ISBN.  Of the 8 books I entered, “Evidence! Citation & Analysis for the Family Historian” had been added to LibraryThing by other users the most times.  It was added 339 times and has 5 reviews.

One question that I had before going to the site was whether it would allow me to “check out” books to my friends and keep track of it.  LibraryThing has the ability to connect to book swapping sites, but that is not what I was looking for.  Let’s say I have a book that a friend wants to borrow so I go ahead and loan it to them.  Weeks later I am looking on my bookshelf for that very book and cannot find it.  So I start looking in all my book stashing spots and cannot find it.  Maybe at that time I remember that I let someone borrow it and then I need to remember who that someone was.  Now if it was a single book, I could probably remember it as long as too much time hasn’t passed.

My idea is that in LibraryThing, I would be able to check out books to others and it would show up in my list as being checked out and by whom.  That way I could consult LibraryThing to jog my memory.  I could also set a checkout period so that my friend doesn’t borrow the book indefinately and take it with them when they move.  After the checkout period expires, LibraryThing would send an e-mail to both myself and the person who has the book reminding both of us to make the physical transfer of the book back to its owner, me.

Some might ask if this should be a feature of LibraryThing or not.  The site is called LibraryThing after all.  Doesn’t a library keep a catalog of books and allow people to check them out?  I can understand that LibraryThing didn’t want to include book swapping as that is not the function of a library, but checking out books is.

I look forward to my continued use of LibraryThing and one day blogging about its new ability to check out books.