Notes from 38th BYU Family History Conference

Family History Conference
BYU
August 1-4, 2006

Keynote Address
Elder Marlin K. Jensen
(his mother wrote his intro)
•Elder Jensen’s talk was supposed to be a devotional on family history.
•His talk is for those devoted to family history.
•Attendees at the conference known as 'enthusiasts'
•Hard at work developing an Internet based system
•One of the biggest challenges that they are addressing is dealing with duplication of work
•Their goals are to consolidate software and simplify steps
•They want to use technology that the lord has blessed us with

Major components of new system:
•'Common pedigree' begins with self-info
•Tell at a glance if temple work has been done
•Providing support for members
•New section of genealogy handbook for temple and family history
•New structure for support
•Make more records avail over internet/digitize records/2 billion microfilmed names/described and indexed
•Family search index w/links to original documents
•Allow users to participate and contribute to extract names
•Ohio genealogy society is currently cooperating w/church fhd
•FamilySearchHistory.org
•Online research help/assistance
•Family History Research should be the primary source of names for temple work

•Beta 2 will begin soon
•Those who create seek to copywrite and profit, we should share their works as a Christian act
•He hope that system will be simple and attract new participants
•Enthusiasts should share their personal spiritual experiences
•We need to get along with our living relatives as part of our efforts to work on our genealogy efforts for people on the other side
•We have an obligation to become better acquainted with those known members in family tree if pedigree is 'done'


•Alma 5: Do you look forward with an eye of faith?
•Spirit of Elijah: have been touched turning hearts of children; Elijah came to restore - manifestation of Holy Ghost confirms importance of family ties
•Unequaled satisfaction of helping the lord to save souls
•Obadiah described the “Saviors on Mount Zion

Impact of technology on Genealogy & Family History
Claire V. Brisson-Banks,BS
Cave drawings to flash drives
Demonstration of time lines-chronologies
Demonstration of drop line direct line charts
circle charts
Google easy genealogy searcher

The primary steps of Genealogy haven't changed with the advent of new technology
What do you know
What do you want to learn
What researches do you need
Search Locate
Record

Elder Jensen's talk is available on familyhistoryconferences.byu.edu


8.2.06
Jay L. Verkler
Wed Keynote
"sorting out the roots with family branches"
New system runs on 1500 computers; large scale
Member focus
Education management
The role of the church in the genealogy industry: new partnership; previously the dominant provider
Digital images and data
New learning & cognitive models
World wide support organization; same language and time zone
The Family History Library teaches the teachers that then teach others
Bring data, tools, and expertise together to create the community
A non-LDS author compiled a book containing 1,200 supernatural experiences in a book describing genealogy experiences
Enable other organizations to connect with the community
Think about the whole user experience, not just the tool
Collaboration unavoidable: we must overlap with others. We find out when we submit to the temple about duplicate work. We need to learn earlier that we are duplicating work. Hundreds of duplicates. Experience must be collaborative
Show data in context of family relationships
Preserve links
Families include both living and dead
It will include a rich set of tools for editing & maintaining data

FamilySearch Release Strategy
v0.9 release for members only
v1.0 general public
v2.0 gen pub more functionality

1 billion records are part of the Family Search data

Warnings:
overly combined persons
duplicate persons
duplicate family members
relationships to wrong people
ordinances applied to wrong person
inaccurate gen info

Combined records experience demo. Maintain person identifier.

World Vital Records: Can we license a re-badged/OEM version of family search?

New Family Search
allows evergreen picture of data
links individuals together
provide framework
reduce massive duplication
used for entire process

There will be a lot of work to organize, clean, verify
The framework for additional sources, info, collaboration

#32. What's new on Familysearch.org
Stephen W. Anderson
*repeat of presentation at BYU genealogy technology conf last February

LDS and non LDS participate in Family History at same rate
Launched site 1 year ago
Next site version will launch 1q07
Search box on home page
7 search boxes
Search on home page increased traffic by 20%
Getting started button: research guides, on homepage
Immediate success gets people more involved
They add 6k films each month
Digital family histories are being added at BYU, over 5K in .pdf
Option to add your own family tree info
1 million names submitted every 3 weeks
lot of submitted names come from non- LDS
3 sets of english probate maps
Register to set up profile of interests, get newsletters, press releases, etc.
>6 billion people on earth 2 billion will die w/o any record of their existence
Who will preserve the records of the remaining 4 billion?
Vital records are being destroyed every day

record, access
digital capture
online indexing
online availability
enter into fam tree
collaboration
record & preserve

digitizing Granite Mountain vault
scan
digitize
qc
cut into images
post online

Online Internet extraction
real time updating of index
indexes are linked to original images
lds and non lds extractors
worldwide operation

familysearchindexing.org
log in
get batch of records
Automatic highlighting of field that should be extracted
drop down boxes to select from known fields
double blind test of double keying, if match then it goes live, otherwise it is sent back to editors


Jim Green
New FamilySearch & its Family Tree

Rumor
people may stop work until the new software comes out
"a rumor without a leg to stand on will get around some other way"
- Jim Tudor

Ending duplicates
Replacement for temple ready
PAF will need to bring paf up to date
Connect with digital pipeline
Provide records

No longer creating microfilm
Family tree is global pedigree chart

Duplicate efforts=wasted effort
Eliminate dulication
Simplify the temple process
There is an estimated 5% duplicate work

Audience continuum
Ordinary member---enthusiast
Scared of each other
Technology can break down the wall or divide

Patrons no longer start with a blank page
not much info on living people unless you enter it yourself

2 ways to add Data: GedCom or by hand

each life event is recorded as a stand alone document
objective to store recorded events in a common personal folder
personal folder in a pedigree
Titus Billings has been baptized 25 times; endowed 21 times: sealed to wife 18 times: sealed to parents 16 times; definitely
Preserve all data, only contributor can remove
combine instead of merge
“separate” instead of uncombined

Rich Running
Bill Mangum
Opening the Granite Mountain Vaults

The Granite Mountain Vaults has been an icon for church since 1960's
2.4 million microfilm rolls
1.7 million microfiche
Need first pres approval to get into Granite Mountain Vaults
Most secure place church owns
Family history center in Granite Mountain Vaults
Film is $5.50 to order

Targeting: what content to deliver
Record acquisitions:
Photograph: 200 cameras worldwide, 60 are digital: 15 megapixel cameras

2-3 terabytes of data sent to salt lake each week
digital processing to deskew, contrast, sharpness
Can't digitize as fast as they are creating it
1 photo 100 feet long 2 inches tall, then cut into individual frames
136 terabytes of info in lib of cong
18 petabytes of info at gmv
Decreased cycle time from 18 months to 4 hours
Family finder

He did a demo of Family Finder

Six years to scan entire vault at full capacity using current technology

System to vote on which films to digitize