Source Pushing~Good or Bad?

A Well-Rooted Tree

The fairly new process of the big genealogy online sites of searching and finding and giving us records has been termed "Source Pushing."  Actually Ancestry has been doing it for quite awhile with their shaky leaves.  But it is becoming more sophisticated with new search technologies from My Heritage being employed and Family Search is right up there neck and neck in the race.  In fact,  we not only have Record Search on the Person Details Page of Family Tree but lately they have been beta testing Record Hinting and it is even better.  So when that is launched soon we might even be nudging our way out in front.

I have been doing some of the beta testing for Record Hinting and I have to say it is very impressive. See the recap of my first impressions at the bottom of this page.

It is going to have wide reaching good effects on moving the work forward with sources and citations right there at our finger tips. However, and it is a big however...we will have to be very careful with it.  The reality is there is no free lunch in genealogy and family history work, even when it is handed to us on a silver platter.  

There is no magic button to be pushed to interrupt what you find on the documents.  That is still going to require some very careful analysis of what is being presented with Source Pushing.  That is possibilities only, not the sure thing.  Source Pushing is a hand up, but it is not a panacea.  We will still need to know about our family before we can confirm yes or no on the programs.

So just a word of caution when working on your own things and especially when working with new and inexperienced patrons. Assumptions that are unfounded can lead to exactly what President Hinckley was trying to alleviate.  Duplication of all the work, including temple work. Nothing could defeat the purpose of Family Tree more than that.

Nothing is ever going to replace the well-trained thoughtful human mind when it comes to this or any other kind of work that requires analysis and pondering and problem solving abilities.   And there are not too many documents that stand alone in helping you come to know and love your ancestors either.  So is Source Pushing good or bad?  It is both.   It's mostly good with the potential to be bad if not used correctly.

Here is the excerpt from the OFSL Newsletter from June 8th from my experince beta testing of Record Hinting.

"Here is my first impression after beta testing a new feature about to be released on Family Search/Family Tree:  It is called "Hinting" and is found on the Person Details Page in Family Tree.

1.  It is very similar to Record Search also found on the Person Details Page. It is also there to help you find records for your ancestor. At this time it does not appear to be replacing Record Search but is an additional research tool.  

2.  Visually it is very nice and less busy than Record Search.  The results will likely be a lot more accurate than some of the random things that come up on Record Search.  When using Record Search the program initially searches only by name and the first date you have entered so a birth date or christening date.  So you will typically get census records and other records that can be identified by a minimal amount of information supplied by you. In order to refine your search for other dates and places you need to go to the left hand side of the page in Record Search and add more information. 

Hinting on the other hand seems to do a lot of that for you by applying more filters initially behind the scenes.  It recognizes what you have already found and finds some things that are missing automatically for you.  The most I have seen in the Hinting Box were 5 or 6 records.  Most have two or three.  Some have none. 

3.  The ones that have no Hints seem to be the ones where you have already attached all the records in FS on the Person Details Page for your person via Record Search or Tree Connect or creating your own sources.  

4.  It reminds me of the old adage "The rich get richer." The more you have worked on your tree and your families, the better you know them, the quicker and easier this is to use.   Also the more records you add the better the filters there are for FS to find even more records.  There is a high percentage of accurate records brought right to you with a lot less effort.  The more you have the better it gets.

5.  It looks like the US will be made easier by using this Hinting feature.  However at this point the outcome on my foreign born ancestors are not helped as much. 

 As an example, my Welsh born, Thomas Rees, produces two census records within his life time in the Hinting box.  Both are Welsh records and neither one of them are him.  By the time these 1880 census records were enumerated he has already been in the America for several years.  He married in 1871. Many records were produced for him here like that marriage record, records in Pennsylvania, records in Missouri including his death and burial records. He had several children that can be found on US Census records.  

Still no records appear for him even when all that information is on the Person Details Page in his Hinting Box.  Maybe that is by intent during this beta testing period for foreign born ancestors, but I don't know.

6. This is going to be a good and helpful feature for all of us.  It can be especially nice for people just getting started who have no research background.  It will give them a hand up and a feeling of accomplishing something right away.  That hopefully will give them a desire to return and find out more about their family.  

7. Here is a good thing about it that I noticed about the Hinting feature.  It was so easy that I wanted to put all the records in my ancestors' Person Details Pages. I don't remember having that feeling when I was adding them one by one and the searching took so much longer. "