Major Transition for Family Search Platform!*

Magnolia Tree

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FamilySearch has been wildly successful in the past few years.  It has grown by leaps and bounds like no one could have imagined. In order to avoid a successful tragedy they knew long ago that they would have to expand the platform to allow for this growth.  This move to a platform called Cassandra that is bigger and more powerful has been in the works for some time.   After beta testing the move 9 times, they were ready.  

I can bet there were some very sleepless nights for a lot of the developers and engineers as well as users. Probably more than a few.  Yesterday morning at around 12:30 am they made the move.  It was announced that there would be a shut down for possibly 24 hours.  

The main purpose of the update was to expand FS capabilities to handle the deluge of users and records added to the site, in unprecedented numbers, in just a couple of years.

There were also other purposes one of which was to disconnect new.familysearch.org the previous iteration of FS before FS/FT. There is now freedom to merge many people that were not mergeable in the past.  However this does not apply to all. There are some that are still too large.

Think Mayflower.  If there are over 80 sources attached to an individual they may not be merged at this time.  But the majority of the ones causing problems in the past have been rectified and we are given freedom at last to proceed and to clean up the records.
We will eventually see far less duplicates than we now see.

They have put some numeric limits of various aspects of what we can add.  This includes how many sources can be added but also pertains to some other things.  More info on that will come out in the coming days from FS.  Most of us do not add more than 80 sources.  Right? And most of the other limits are equally as high so not too much to worry about for most people.  

I learned that some insiders like the big bloggers, including James Tanner had the inside track info that FS was planning to have it done by 5:00 am Mountain Time.  James sat at his computer yesterday giving the blow by blow of what he was thinking and what was happening.  It was fun.  He said, "Most people do not read blogs for breaking news".  I said,  "They do if they know which blog to read!"  

If you want the insider's view go to these blog posts he has written in the past 24+hours.

This event was a bit reminiscent of the Y2K scare with much of the same results.  It reminds me of that plaque you sometimes see that says, "On this spot (insert a specific date) absolutely nothing (insert bad) happened."  

The links 

http://genealogysstar.blogspot.com/2016/06/a-new-beginning-familysearch-family.html

http://genealogysstar.blogspot.com/2016/06/a-new-beginning-familysearch-family_27.html

http://genealogysstar.blogspot.com/2016/06/a-new-beginning-familysearch-family_51.html

http://genealogysstar.blogspot.com/2016/06/a-new-beginning-familysearch-family_12.html

Way To Go FamilySearch~Congratulations!

Ron Tanner.....Take a Break!

"You Have To Put Your Hands On It"

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Last week was the first new lesson under the new staff training program in our Library!  I for one was really delighted with Kim's lesson and how much I learned. I have yet to have had a minute to look at the bulletin board she created but it looks fantastic as well.   I am sure all of us felt the same abut her lesson.  I love it when we can all share and teach each other and all move forward in our learning.  So thank you to both Kim and Linda for what they are planning for us in the future as well.

Last week I had very little time to work on the assignment as I was working with patrons most of the day and evening until 8:30.  So I missed a lot of the synergy going on among all of you as you collaborated together on answering the questions.  So yesterday I tried plowing through it on my own and then Jim has been helping with it since then.  Bob spent a lot of time creating a spread sheet for all of us to have and use in the future.  It is really a good one.  Again group teaching.  It is the best.  And one thing I re-learned for sure is that You have to put your hands on this to learn it.  Not surprising, that is just the way most things are.  Someone can tell you about it but until you try it yourself your don't really learn it.  The test is can you teach someone else to do it? As Stephen Covey said, that is when you own it.  When you just hear about something and don't follow through with the practical application you only know about something but you do not know it.  Learning something is a verb.  It requires action.

*On another note, I saw in the handout that Kim referenced Mark Lowe's form and also an article on "Who Is This Tick Mark? Using the Pre-1850 census Records."  I googled that and found a video by Mark Lowe on YouTube.  Perfect, right?  Not exactly.  i discovered that one reason I cannot find a lot of things on Ancestry anymore is that they are add-ons to the free account.  The Ancestry Academy is one of those things.  $11.99 per month if you want the courses and classes.

I was able to access a free Crista Cowan video that was great so I'll give you that link below. It is a 15 minute video and helpful in discerning what the tick marks mean and where you can go from there.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7Z8gDMU8Nkk

Happy Hunting!  Bonnie

3 Tips For Using Google For Genealogy

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Clearing up The Fog With Google!

I was excited to see this on the FamilySearch blog post this week.  I attended the class on Google by Lisa Louise Cooke at Rootstech back in February.  I also bought her book on the subject and have been meaning to get back to it and share more about it.  Time just races by with more and more information coming to our attention daily.  It is hard to keep up for sure.  But this class was really worth revisiting. 

* I was glad to see a link to Lisa's presentation is included in this great article by Tyler Stahle. Just looking up the link he included I saw that many of the RT classes are archived on that same page.  Made me want to hear them all again.  Treat yourself to many or all of the talks!

June 16, 2016 by Tyler S. Stahle

Family Search Blog

It’s likely that we’ve all turned to Google at some point in our genealogical research. After all, simply typing in our search topic, hitting “Enter,” and hoping for the best is one of easiest ways to be led to heaps of helpful (and sometimes not-so-helpful) sources. But there’s a better way to use Google for family history research says Lisa Louise Cooke, host of The Genealogy Gems Podcast.

“I’ve discovered that there actually is a methodology to using Google for genealogy,” said Cooke in her presentation at RootsTech 2016. “There really is a science to it.”

While there are many ways you can use Google to aid your research, here are three of the most beneficial:

1. Formulate Specific Queries

The first and most important step to using Google successfully is identifying what you want to find. That may sound simple, says Cooke, but many people will simply pull up Google and search “Johnson.” Instantly, the searcher will be overwhelmed with results that likely aren’t relevant due to the commonality of the name “Johnson.”

“We’ve been a little too global in what we’re requesting,” says Cooke. “So don’t throw your genealogy brain out the window just because it’s going to Google.com. Structure a question about what you want in really specific terms. Are you looking for a particular record collection? Are you looking for a particular ancestor in a family? Are you just trying to figure out how to upload your family tree?”

Cooke says it’s a good idea to formulate your question to Google just as you would to a reference librarian.

“How would I describe it to a reference librarian? Ask yourself that. That will help you in doing this.”

2. Use Quotation Marks and Minus Signs to Narrow Search Results

One of the best ways to get relevant results from a Google search is to use quotation marks in your search query. Quotation marks tell Google to display only an exact keyword or phrase in all results.

“If I’m doing newspaper research in the San Francisco area, I put ‘newspapers’ in quotes and also ‘San Francisco.’ I’m telling Google something very specific about—it’s got to have ‘newspapers,’ and it’s got to have ‘San Francisco,’” said Cooke.

To further refine search results, you can also use the minus sign (-) to get rid of keywords that you know have nothing to do with your family.

3. Set Up Google Alerts

After you’ve flushed out the perfect search query for your ancestors, turn to Google Alerts. Google Alerts will take the keywords or phrase you’ve developed and will run it across the internet every hour of every day until you tell it to stop.

“Setting up Google Alerts is like getting your own genealogy personal assistant, somebody who’s going to do this for you in the background,” says Cooke.

To create a customized Google Alert, go to www.google.com/alerts. In the search bar near the top of the page, insert your query or the keyword you want to search. In the box below that, type the email address you wish to have results sent to, and click “Create Alert.”

Your customized Google Alert will then send you links to web pages that match your query.

After you set up the alert, Google will email you updates on new and updated web pages. Cooke also said, “You can have up to a thousand [alerts]. You’re going to sign in, make one query after another, and in your sleep, Google will be searching and finding ancestors. And you will wake up, and it’s just like Christmas every day. I love it.”

You can learn more about using Google for genealogy by watching Cooke’s RootsTech presentation here.

How do you use Google for genealogy? Tweet us @RootsTechConf.