In December 2008, I wrote a blog post titled 9 Genealogy Predictions for 2009.  It is now time to review that list and see how well the predictions matched reality.

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.

Family Tree Maker 2009 now supports source citation templates following Evidence Explained.  To my knowledge, no other desktop genealogy applications have announced this support.

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.

I am disappointed that none of the mentioned online databases support Evidence Explained source citations.  Please correct me if I am mistaken.  If GenSeek is released in 2010, maybe it will be the first.

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.

On December 28, 2009 there were a total of 20,298 content pages on the FamilySearch Research Wiki.

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.

This did not happen in 2009, but it might happen in 2010.

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.

To my knowledge this did not happen.  In fact, Ancestry went public in 2009.

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.

Finally a correct prediction! Doing a group search on Facebook resulted in 286 results for genealogy societies.

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.

This one was easy to predict as even one more app would have fulfilled the prediction.  There are currently 7 applications listed in the App Store:

MobileFamily Tree – $4.99

Reunion – $14.99

GedView – $3.99

FamViewer – $14.99

Mobile Tree – $4.99

Shrubs – $9.99

iCensus – $3.99

To learn more about some of these apps, check out the blog post titled, Genealogy Apps for iPhone, by Joan Miller. 

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.

Web 3.0?  What is that?  You can find discussions about microformats and full fledged ontologies, but not much applied to genealogy in 2009.

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.

There is still so much opportunity in this area without much action.  I did find a casual game called Family Mystery: The Story of Amy where genealogy is used as the theme for the game but not much else.

So out of 9 predictions, I give myself a score of 3.5 which is about as often as I was correct when as a teenager I operated the “guess your age or weight” game at an amusement park.  After a few days, I was moved to the skee ball games which fit my talents much better.

Best wishes for a wonderful 2010 full of genealogy innovation and hopefully some surprises!

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!

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.

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!

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.

One of the people that I would really enjoy meeting is Paul Allen.  He is an internet entrepreneur, co-founder of Ancestry.com, and is currently CEO of WorldVitalRecords.com with its genealogy social networking site, FamilyLink.com.

I would also love to meet Elizabeth Shown Mills.  She has made great contributions to the genealogy community especially in the areas of source citation, evidence, and analysis.

These are just two of the people I would like to meet.  I am keeping a list of People to Meet and when I meet them I will put the date and location.

I appreciate the interviews that the Genealogy Guys do so that I can get to know more people in the genealogy community.  Drew and George are also on my list.