GenealogyClassBlog

FamilySearch Home Page April 2011

Have you tried FamilySearch? It’s a large, free website for genealogists, provided by The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints. It is somewhat complex, and is currently undergoing some very serious updating. So, you may find it challenging to try to locate the information you need, and to know whether you have found everything there is to find. Want a list of genealogy terms in French? Want to find online lectures? Want to find which roll of microfilm might have your ancestor’s will? Or maybe you want to find published genealogies on the surname of your ancestor? Let me help you.

I will be presenting an even newer “What’s New” lecture on Saturday, April 9, from 10:30 to 12:30 at the Tulsa City County Library’s Genealogy Center. This is a free, two-hour program, and is an update to what I’ve presented previously. The objective is to help explain where FamilySearch has been, where it’s going, and how to use it now. I will be available afterward to answer questions, too.

The Genealogy Center is located at 2901 S. Harvard in Tulsa. See other TCCL events at this link.*

I hope to see you there. Please tell me that you learned about the program from reading my blog post!

* When you click the link, you’ll be downloading a pdf brochure, which may be opened using Adobe Acrobat Reader.

beta.familysearch.org

Whether you are new to genealogy or have been researching your ancestry for years, you need to know what is going on with FamilySearch®. I included the topic of FamilySearch® in class in late October and I have already heard about changes I’ll need to make to my presentation.

On Thursday, February 24, 2011, I will be presenting an evening workshop for the Tulsa Genealogical Society on the topic, “What’s New With FamilySearch®?”

I presented the same topic in July for the Tulsa City-County Library and had a large crowd at Hardesty Library. FamilySearch® is a free website, an online home for the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints and their genealogical help to everyone – whether Mormon or not.

The people at FamilySearch® have been listening to genealogists. I even had a meeting with Jay Verkler, the FamilySearch CEO while at the Federation of Genealogical Societies’ 2009 National Conference in Little Rock. They have introduced new online spaces, and are uploading digitized records. They have a huge volunteer indexing program and they are working to digitally back up their collection of 2.4 million rolls of microfilm as well.

When I presented the program in July, I included two brand new online videos that you should be sure to watch. Visit their blog entry from July to access the videos.

And, to visit their beta site, which is where they are testing all of these new features, go to http://beta.familysearch.org. Their original site can still be found at http://www.familysearch.org.

The mini workshop is a fund-raiser for TGS, and will be held at their library, 9136 E. 31st St., from 6:30 to 8:30. Check the Tulsa Genealogical Society’s website for the recommended donation amount.

Boston Avenue Church

It’s time again for the School of Continuing Education at Boston Avenue United Methodist Church. My five-week genealogy classes will move from their usual Tuesday evenings to Wednesday mornings, from 9:30 to 10:30 and from 10:45 to 11:45. Registration for the school is $12.00, and includes all of the classes you can take for that same price. Other classes are listed in the brochure or in the church newspaper, available at BostonAvenue.org.

Genealogy classes are in two different series — one to learn the basics and the other to pick up particular topics in a lecture format. All five of these are programs that I have presented locally, including two that I presented at the 2009 Federation of Genealogical Societies National Conference. Here are the specific titles:

GENEALOGY:  FAMILY HISTORY BASICS  9:30 – 10:30 am

Oct 6 – Important First Steps
Oct 13 – The Census
Oct 20 – The Family History Library
Oct 27 – Court, Land & Military Records
Nov 3 – Tour of Internet Resources

FIVE GENEALOGY TALKS  10:45 – 11:45 am

Oct 6 – How Do You Know? Understanding Evidence and Citing Your Sources
Oct 13 – How to Be a Power Hitter: Improve Your Online Searching Skills
Oct 20 – What’s New at FamilySearch®?
Oct 27 – Oklahoma Settlement:  Territorial Homestead and Allotment Records
Nov 3 – Deutsche Vorfahren:  German Ancestors

For more information call Boston Avenue at 918-583-5181 or visit the church’s web site at www.bostonavenue.org/newspaper.shtml and download the newspaper from 24 September 2010.

Hardesty Regional Library

The Tulsa City-County Library is offering some great programming for July again this year, during what it calls Family History Month. Download a copy of the beautiful, new, July Event Guide for the complete schedule as well as an interesting article about Linda Colvard and her help with adoption cases, Or go to the library’s Events page to see what programs are scheduled for the rest of July.

On Tuesday, 27 July, I will be presenting “What’s New With FamilySearch?” from 6:30 to 8:30 at the Hardesty Regional Library, 8316 E. 93rd St. in Tulsa. FamilySearch, also known as the online face of the Family History Library in Salt Lake City, is a free website that is fairly easy to use even before attending a class. But there is much more to FamilySearch now that they have enhanced and improved it in the last two years. I look forward to exploring it with you on the 27th.

Last night I attended a very interesting program presented by Dr. Mary Larson from Oklahoma State University on oral history (more on that later), and on Saturday seventy people were in the audience with me as Meg Hacker of Fort Worth’s Southwest Regional Branch of the National Archives introduced us to what genealogists can find, how to access descriptions of collections, and how to use some online databases at their website — www.archives.gov. Both of these were held at Hardesty, as will most of the remaining programs for the month. This is a major change from the past, but the move from to Hardesty was necessary so that there will be more room and chairs for the large number of people who attend these programs every July.

This Saturday, though, the programs will be held at Central Library because the speakers will be featuring the collections of Tulsa City-County Library’s Research Center, where you can find city directories, maps, the vertical files, high school yearbooks, newspapers, and other little-known treasures for local research. See the descriptions of both the morning and afternoon sessions, to be held in Aaronson Auditorium on the first floor. There will be an open house on the fourth floor between the sessions. Parking should not be a problem on Saturday because of all of the unused metered spaces nearby. I hope to see you there.

Dick Eastman, in his Eastman’s Online Genealogy Newsletter blog on Saturday, Dec. 5, highlights an article by genealogist Beau Sharbrough, an expert at online and computer genealogy, on his Unofficial Footnote Blog. On Saturday Beau wrote, updating the unofficial list of online census images and indexes available and in the works. He mentions the four major resources and compares what they have to offer:  Ancestry.com; HeritageQuest Online; Footnote; and FamilySearch. We discussed each of these in class, but a brief review might be helpful.

Ancestry.com requires a subscription, but offers thousands and thousands of databases beyond the U.S. Federal Census. Some are indexes only, but many are linked to scanned images of the census pages. You may subscribe directly to Ancestry.com, but you may also use it for no charge, on-site at many libraries, including all branches of the Tulsa City-County Library, and at the Tulsa Genealogical Society.

You may use HeritageQuest Online onsite at the Genealogy Center, a part of the Tulsa City-County Library. Private subscriptions are not available. Of the four resources mentioned, HeritageQuest offers the fewest databases, but I like its census index searching functionality and the quality of its scanned images.

Footnote.com offers millions of records, but not nearly as many databases as those found at Ancestry.com. It is also available by personal subscription, for a much lower cost than that of Ancestry.This subscription is also provided by the Tulsa City-County Library, for use on-site at the Genealogy Center.

FamilySearch is the online resource of the Family History Library and the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints. As Beau explains, FamilySearch has partnered with Footnote to enable users access to some of the images, but they have also digitized many of the images themselves, and have a very large body of images and databases. Their indexing project is being accomplished through the use of volunteers. Access to their information is free. The section of their site which offers the U.S. Federal Census images is called Record Search, currently found at this url:  http://pilot.familysearch.org/recordsearch/start.html#start.

For specifics, I would recommend reading both posts, both by Dick and by Beau, as well as the comments that follow each.