Here is something new I am trying here at ThinkGenealogy.  It’s called Childhood Memory Monday.  This is where I share something memorable from my childhood.  Sometimes I will present lessons learned or ponder why a certain memory is still “living” when so many have been forgotten.

Now, lets get rolling.

Back in the time when Big Wheels ruled the street (Did you own a Big Wheel?), a new challenger appeared…

It was called The Green Machine and was released in 1975:

Have you ever ridden a Green Machine? 

I still remember its awesomeness.  There is a need that little boys have above traveling from point A to B.  It involves speed, control, adrenaline, and spinning out!  I can still remember pedaling at top speed down the street and then thrusting one hand forward and the other back to start the spinning motion.

If you have never experienced this, maybe you can get an idea of what you missed from this video of the re-released Green Machine:

The Green Machine was such a coveted ride, that owning one could be dangerous. 

My mother ran a Day Care out of our house and one of the children didn’t like how I was not sharing my Green Machine.  In an effort to get me to share, the kid picked up a rock the size of a lunchbox with both hands and popped me over the head with it.  I started to bleed and was rushed to the bathroom sink to wash the wound. 

As I recall, I didn’t require stitches.

Lessons learned:

• Thou shalt not covet thy care provider’s son’s Green Machine.
• Sharing with others is not just nice, it can save your life.

Anyone have a similar experience with their Green Machine?  As a child, did you ever covet something to the point that it led to violence?  Why do you suppose I remember this so well?  What other lessons can be learned?  What would be a humorous title for this experience?

P.S. I wrote this article earlier in the week and shared it with my family.  Yesterday my oldest son and I were in the car driving through a neighborhood and guess what we saw?  A new-style green machine.  My son was the first to see it & proceeded to mock me.  I was excited enough at seeing one, that I rolled down the window and shouted: “Hey kid, nice green machine.”  I wonder if he will ever feel the same way about his first bicycle that I do about my green machine.

How do you go about finding people to follow on Twitter?  What tools can I use?  How do I find others interested in genealogy?

In this 10 minute video we will explore ways to find and follow genealogists on twitter.

The video shows a list of 12 people and 12 companies/organizations on Twitter that genealogists might be interested in following. 

Here is that list:

People

1. AncestryInsider
2. danlynch
3. DearMYRTLE
4. dickeastman
5. footnoteMaven
6. LisaCooke
7. Lmeitzler
8. lovegenealogy
9. megansmolenyak
10. rjseaver
11. TamuraJones
12. TheGenealogue

Companies/Organizations

1. Ancestrydotcom
2. familylink
3. familypursuit
4. FamilyTreeMag
5. FHExpos
6. footnote
7. geneabloggers
8. geni
9. genseek
10. legacyfamily
11. rootsmagic
12. rootstelevision

The video also shows how to use the following tools:

• wefollow – genealogy
• Twitter Groups – genealogy
• Twitter Groups – surnames
• Twitter Search

What other genealogists or genealogy organizations would you recommend that people follow on Twitter?  What other tools or strategies do you use to find people to follow?  How can you tell if someone would be good to follow?  Any warning signs that would indicate that you shouldn’t follow someone?  What confuses you about following on Twitter?

For best viewing, click on the video while it is playing to view a larger version on the YouTube site & click the HD button to see it in high definition:

Did you find this video helpful? Do you have any other tips for setting up an account for a genealogist? What do you find most confusing about Twitter? If you are not signed up for Twitter now, are you going to sign up after watching the video?

I would love to hear your comments.  If you would like to follow me on Twitter, my username is marktucker.

I plan to e-mail a copy of the results to all those who took the survey and provided an e-mail address.  If you took the survey, didn’t provide your e-mail, and still want a copy of the results, contact me via this contact link.

As time permits, I will write about the survey results and some of the feedback I received.

I am grateful to the many bloggers and podcasters that spread the word about this effort.  Thank you for all that watched the video and participated in the survey.  I am excited to see how this effort continues over the next months and years.

Sincerely,

Mark Tucker

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.

There is one point of clarification that I would like to make: although the technology exists today to do this type of “one click” citation it has not been implemented. What I showed was a prototype proving that it was possible. What needs to happen next is for online organizations (like Ancestry, FamilySearch, World Vital Records, Footnote, GenSeek, etc.) and genealogy software companies (like the makers of RootsMagic, Legacy, and Family Tree Maker) to agree on a file format and implement it. The online organizations would need to start providing a file with a download link for each source on their site and the genealogy database applications would need to support importing of the files. One could view the video as a tutorial of how things could be. That is precisely why it is so important to get the word out.

This is a grassroots effort from the genealogy community to let genealogy software and service providers know what we want. Citing sources is important to us. There are inconsistencies and other problems that need to be solved. Let’s find a way to get together and solve them. I am just one voice trying to spotlight an issue and provide a way for others to get their voices heard. We have had 200 respondents to the individual survey with
83% classifying themselves as non-professional genealogists.

Here are a few more statistics:

88% of respondents say that citing sources is very important with the remaining 12% saying it is important. 77% say they find citing sources difficult or very difficult. When asked if there should be one standard citation style for genealogy, 90% responded in the affirmative. Respondents used Evidence Explained the most (62%) as a guide for genealogy research. The two most used online genealogy sites are Ancestry.com and FamilySearch. It would be great if one of those would join in support of this effort. When asked “Does the ability to click a link on a website and have the source citation imported into your genealogy software interest you?” 84% said they were very interested with an additional 10% saying they were interested. Instead of 1100 views of the YouTube video, I would like to see 10,000 with at least 1000 filling out the survey. Maybe at that point this effort will have enough momentum to really get moving.  Is that too much to ask from the genealogy community?

One surprising and disappointing statistic is the low numbers taking the company and organization survey; only 4.  All 4 felt that citing sources were very important and all would be willing to participate in the cause.

Once again I want to thank Dick Eastman for his contributions to the genealogy community on this and many other issues.

Keep spreading the word and let your voice be heard.

This week RootsTelevision is featuring the video,”A Better Way to Cite Online Sources“.  I appreciate their help in getting the word out.  While you are there check out some of the other great videos they are featuring. Here is a link to the Og Blog post.

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!

1. DNA Channel: Are You Smarter than a Grade School Genealogist? Episode 1 – Introduction to DNA
2. How To Channel: 10 Things Genealogy Software Should Do

We are having fun coming up with other ideas that we want to share in video.

Episode 1 – Introduction to DNA 

Match your genealogy knowledge against a grade schooler to determine: Are You Smarter than a Grade School Genealogist?  In this episode, Nathan, a 4th grader from Arizona introduces DNA for the genealogist. 

Video – YouTube (4:04)

I submitted it to Roots Television and am happy to announce that it is currently being featured on the RootsTube channel.

Here are links regarding the presentation:

• Paper - 18 pages
• Slides - 29 slides
• Video (recorded later) - 17:30

Would you like to see these 10 ideas implemented in the genealogy software that you use?  How can these ideas be improved upon?  I encourage you to respond.