I was disappointed yesterday to hear of another outbreak of the virus that’s sweeping through genealogy. A new GEDCOM (GEnealogy Data COMmunication) file sharing site sprang up. I’m disappointed because this nonsense undermines the practice of genealogy. Mostly this is because many (if not most) GEDCOMs being shared contain incorrect conclusions. Sharing incorrect conclusions is the single biggest threat to our hobby. It wastes an incredible amount of research time.
Other Software
Researching Distant Records Now Easier
Geographically distant genealogists have been helping each other find records for years. It’s a service referred to as lookups. It works like this: if you’re looking for a record that you haven’t been able to locate locally nor online, you arrange through email or a forum, to have a genealogist who is local to the record do the lookup for you and send you a scan or photo.
Finding and transacting a lookup has gotten easier since Genlighten.com has become available. This service connects genealogists and providers of lookups, handles payment, notifications, service ratings, and document delivery. It has the promise of a centralize source of lookup providers. This helps those of us in need of distant record location as well as those who are willing to do lookups.
In this video: Getting Distant Records Through Genlighten, I show you how to find a provider, request a lookup, and how to retrieve the resulting image.
Find Sources with Ancestry.com’s Explore by Location
You can discover sources of information about relatives you may not have been aware of. Ancestry.com has a feature called explore by location that will show you research resources by location. These resources can give you ideas about sources of information you hadn’t thought of or known about. In this video: Ancestry.com Explore by Location Feature, I show you how to see these resources, how to conduct a location specific search, and view brief historical information about a location.
Is the Virtual Globe Bloat?
I’ve been working on a MacFamilyTree screencast this evening. It’s related to geocoding which is related to the “virtual globe” feature. As is usual for me when I explore features, I asked myself, “What value does this offer genealogists?” I’m having a hard time coming up with something nice to say about this one.
Yes, I get that you can see points on a globe for events in your database. And, that lines indicating the direction of movement connect the points. So, what? How can this help you with the fundamental activities a genealogist undertakes? Does it help you plan or carry out research? No. Can it help you identify or locate sources? No. Can you turn evidence into sound conclusions with it? No. Does it make preserving information more efficient or effective? No. I can’t imagine a single way that this “feature” improves, in a material way, what you can do already. [Read more…] about Is the Virtual Globe Bloat?
Handling People with Multiple Names in the MacGenealogist File System
People change names for many reasons. What’s surprising, at least when new to genealogical research, is that it’s relatively common for a person’s name to change during their lifetime. Since it’s common and adds complexity to our practice, I devised a solution with respect to storing computer files. There are three predominant problems that it eliminates.
The Problems
There are countless people in your genealogy with more than one name. Trying to remember all the name variants and which folders contain the files for each is unnecessary. The computer excels at such things.
Storing duplicates of each file for all the name variants wastes disk space and creates a maintenance problem.
Files relating to one person, but scattered across folders can cause confusion, duplicate effort, and conclusions based on incomplete information.
The Solution
The MacGenealogist File System deals effectively with changing names—both person and place names—by making use of the power and elegance of a little known feature of the Macintosh operating system: aliases. [Read more…] about Handling People with Multiple Names in the MacGenealogist File System