Continuing this series of posts about the issues of duplicated misinformation and errors in online family trees. The question posed is whether or not the causes of the deficiencies can be quantified and if there are some corrective measures that can be implemented either from a programming standpoint or from efforts by the genealogical community. In this third part I propose to discuss the issue of genealogical validation through extensive repetition. In other words, if you say something long enough, does it become true. This is, of course, the Big Lie technique of propaganda.
It may seem excessive to compare online public family trees to propaganda, but some of the same mechanisms are in effect. For example, a certain daguerrotype that surfaced some time ago was claimed to be an image of my 3rd Great-grandfather, John Tanner. No other photograph is known to exist of John Tanner. When the daguerrotype image surfaced with the claim, my daughter, Amy Thiriot, and I had an extensive discussion as to whether or not the offending photo could possibly, historically be considered as a photo of John Tanner. The image is unmistakably a daguerrotype. The first know such image in the United States was in 1839. John Tanner was born in Rhode Island in 1878. So he would have been 61 years old by the time the first such image was even physically possible. I will not risk spreading the image further by including it in this post. But you can see it on Amy's Blog, TheAncestorFiles, if you wish to do so. The point here is that despite our extensive analysis, Amy's historical research and writing about our conclusions which are unassailable, the image of the daguerrotype continues to be posted online as an image of John Tanner. One of the many reasons why this is not possible is that none of the males in the daguerrotype are over 60 years of age, John Tanner's age at the time of the first daguerrotype in the U.S.
But now, the Internet has created its own reality. The daguerrotype has been identified as John Tanner so many times that the truth has been lost in the noise of the repetitions. This is exactly what happens to other misinformation as it is spread across the world by the Internet. A quick look at FamilySearch.org's Family Tree Photos shows that the image is there identified without qualification, as an photo of John Tanner. Interestingly, the Photos program does not even recognize me as being John Tanner's descendant. Some of the images of the daguerrotype have three conflicting tags and so the images do not show up as in my pedigree.
Why do situations such as these persist? Because of carelessness? I think it is mainly because people want to believe. They have no desire to be dissuaded from their mistakes. If every single fact asserted in an online family tree is subject to suspicion, how can such a system endure? Why don't all of these falsified family trees just collapse of their own weight? They are suspended by belief and by the special interests of those sponsoring the family trees.
We already have a very good online system of establishing value. It is the rating system used by online sellers and reviewers of all types. A good example is Amazon.com. Each product listed has to face a litany of reviewers who rank the products according to their ultimate usefulness and adherence to the product claims. What we need online is a way of rating the information, perhaps with one to five stars. All of the reviews of the information should then be visible, just as they are on Amazon.com, with the ranking clearly visible. There should be some kind of warning system when an entry got very low reviews that indicates that the entry is unacceptable for the reasons shown in the ratings reviews. Maybe if people were subject to some sort of review, they just might stop adding junk to the family trees.
One thing that comes out in Amazon's reviews is when one or more disgruntled users have clearly misunderstood the use of the product or purchased the wrong product, their reviews are transparent on that subject.
Don't take me wrong, I do not seriously believe that the companies hosting family trees online would risk the ire of their paying customers to produce believable family trees, but I can always dream. By the way comments made on the Photos website on the mis-identified daguerrotype have no effect whatsoever. It is unlikely that the people who put the photos online have ever looked at the site since uploading the photos.
Wednesday, December 11, 2013
MyHeritage adds millions of Nordic records
Both my wife and I have Scandinavian ancestors so the notice that MyHeritage.com has added millions of Nordic records is really good news. Their announcement states that they have added records from Sweden, Norway, Denmark and Finland from as early as the 1600s. The announcement goes on to state:
The collections contain over 90 million names and include birth, death, marriage and baptism records, as well as census and many more records. This is in addition to 70 million profiles in 730,000 family trees already created by MyHeritage users with ancestors in this region. This is a treasure trove of records, not only for people living today in these countries but for all whose families originated in the region.MyHeritage has also launched social media channels for Norway, Denmark and Finland – including local blogs and Facebook and Twitter accounts. The social media channels are in the languages of the countries. Follow orders will be the first to hear about the new record collections as they become available. As the announcement further says:
In addition to significant content added today, MyHeritage is investing in digitizing more Nordic historical content and has signed new agreements which will result in a wealth of regional historical records to be added over the next few years.
This newly digitized content is already available for searching in SuperSearch, our global search engine for historical records. Record Matching technology will be unleashed on these records to automatically find relevant historical records for people in your tree.I am very interested in this new development will look forward to expanding my research and the Scandinavian countries.
Does Genealogy need to be Internationalized?
From reading books written about doing genealogical research and attending conferences around the country, I have been constantly reminded that the overall emphasis of genealogy and genealogical instruction in the United States and in most English speaking countries focuses, and properly so, on the participants local and national records. However, the upcoming RootsTech 2014 Conference points up an important and often neglected aspect of genealogy: the entire study of family history is international in scope.
Yesterday I presented at a genealogy club meeting for a large retirement community outside of Tucson, Arizona. Their interest and enthusiasm for genealogy was highly evident. The one theme that came through again and again from questions and comments made was the need to do research in languages other than English. For some, finding information about the country of their ancestors's origin was an almost insurmountable obstacle. There was no doubt that at some point in their research, every single one of the researchers would encounter a non-English language and culture.
How well prepared are we, as genealogists, to move across international boundaries in our research? I suggest that we need far more than word lists and Google Translate, to assist us in understanding enough of the culture to find our ancestors. This need extends to every aspect of the countries of origin including social, cultural and political issues that lie at the heart of doing competent research in another country. This is particularly true when our research takes us outside of the main area of focus in Western Europe.
Let me illustrate one aspect of the problem. It is widely believed that Ancestry.com is the "largest online database" for doing genealogical research. This may be true, but let's look at the composition of the records on Ancestry.com. If you look at the World Edition of the program you will find the following by filtering the Card Catalog and noting the number of records in different categories out of the 31,458 Collections listed:
You might note that North America includes the USA and Canada and Mexico. Now let's do the same thing with some of the other large online databases, such as MyHeritage.com and FamilySearch.org.
FamilySearch.org has 1673 Collections listed. You might note, as I have observed before, that the number of collections bears only a limited relationship to the actual number of records. You might also discover that both Ancestry.com and WorldVitalRecords.com list books as "collections." Whereas FamilySearch.org has an entirely separate category for books and has over 100,000 digitized books. Any comparisons between the three are almost impossible to make. My point here is not to compare the three, but to point out the composition of the records. Here is the breakdown:
There are other areas listed, of course. But you can easily see that the bulk of the records come from the same places as those in Ancestry.com. Now what about MyHeritage.com's Collections? MyHeritage.com owns WorldVitalRecords.com but has additional records available not directly listed on that website. So the count comes from WorldVitalRecords.com's Card Catalog and a total of 23,209 records:
As you can see, the number of records online in these large online databases is markedly shifted towards English language records. Another example, FamilySearch.org is the only site with records from Iceland with 2 Collections.
Now, my point here is that to be successful in genealogical research, we need access to records. It is very likely that the emphasis in providing records for research has historically followed the ethnic composition of the United States and Western Europe. If we want genealogy to grow, we need to become involved in moving the records of all of the rest of the world into a position where they can also be accessed online. I certainly realize the political and cultural implications of my statements. But if your family came from Estonia or Lebanon or Israel or China, you should also be able to research your family online.
Yesterday I presented at a genealogy club meeting for a large retirement community outside of Tucson, Arizona. Their interest and enthusiasm for genealogy was highly evident. The one theme that came through again and again from questions and comments made was the need to do research in languages other than English. For some, finding information about the country of their ancestors's origin was an almost insurmountable obstacle. There was no doubt that at some point in their research, every single one of the researchers would encounter a non-English language and culture.
How well prepared are we, as genealogists, to move across international boundaries in our research? I suggest that we need far more than word lists and Google Translate, to assist us in understanding enough of the culture to find our ancestors. This need extends to every aspect of the countries of origin including social, cultural and political issues that lie at the heart of doing competent research in another country. This is particularly true when our research takes us outside of the main area of focus in Western Europe.
Let me illustrate one aspect of the problem. It is widely believed that Ancestry.com is the "largest online database" for doing genealogical research. This may be true, but let's look at the composition of the records on Ancestry.com. If you look at the World Edition of the program you will find the following by filtering the Card Catalog and noting the number of records in different categories out of the 31,458 Collections listed:
- North America: 26,953 Collections
- Europe: 4,662 Collections
- Canada: 1,965 Collections
- USA: 25,163 Collections
- South America: 12 Collections
- Africa: 15 Collections
- Asia: 57 Collections
- Mexico: 22 Collections
You might note that North America includes the USA and Canada and Mexico. Now let's do the same thing with some of the other large online databases, such as MyHeritage.com and FamilySearch.org.
FamilySearch.org has 1673 Collections listed. You might note, as I have observed before, that the number of collections bears only a limited relationship to the actual number of records. You might also discover that both Ancestry.com and WorldVitalRecords.com list books as "collections." Whereas FamilySearch.org has an entirely separate category for books and has over 100,000 digitized books. Any comparisons between the three are almost impossible to make. My point here is not to compare the three, but to point out the composition of the records. Here is the breakdown:
- United States: 749 Collections
- Continental Europe: 444 Collections
- United Kingdom and Ireland: 104 Collections
- Caribbean, Central and South America: 153 Collections
- Mexico: 65 Collections
- Africa: 20 Collections
- Asia and Middle East: 33 Collections
There are other areas listed, of course. But you can easily see that the bulk of the records come from the same places as those in Ancestry.com. Now what about MyHeritage.com's Collections? MyHeritage.com owns WorldVitalRecords.com but has additional records available not directly listed on that website. So the count comes from WorldVitalRecords.com's Card Catalog and a total of 23,209 records:
- USA: 11,024 Collections
- Canada: 1,104 Collections
- United Kingdom: 2,399 Collections
- Mexico: 6 Collections (none of which are actually source records from Mexico)
- Germany: 138 Collections (almost all from the United States)
As you can see, the number of records online in these large online databases is markedly shifted towards English language records. Another example, FamilySearch.org is the only site with records from Iceland with 2 Collections.
Now, my point here is that to be successful in genealogical research, we need access to records. It is very likely that the emphasis in providing records for research has historically followed the ethnic composition of the United States and Western Europe. If we want genealogy to grow, we need to become involved in moving the records of all of the rest of the world into a position where they can also be accessed online. I certainly realize the political and cultural implications of my statements. But if your family came from Estonia or Lebanon or Israel or China, you should also be able to research your family online.
Tuesday, December 10, 2013
Google Translate now in 80 languages
You may not have relatives that speak the new languages added to Google Translate, but there is obviously someone who does. Google Translate now works in 80 different languages. Some of the languages added include the following:
- Hausa (Harshen Hausa), spoken in Nigeria and neighboring countries with 35 million native speakers
- Igbo (Asụsụ Igbo) spoken in Nigeria with 25 million native speakers
- Yoruba (èdè Yorùbá) spoken in Nigeria and neighboring countries with 28 million native speakers
- Somali (Af-Soomaali) spoken in Somalia and other countries around the Horn of Africa with 17 million native speakers
- Zulu (isiZulu) spoken in South Africa and other south-western African countries with 10 million native speakers
- Mongolian (Монгол хэл), official language in Mongolia and also spoken in parts of China with 6 million native speakers
- Nepali (नेपाली), spoken in Nepal and India with 17 million native speakers
- Punjabi language (ਪੰਜਾਬੀ) (Gurmukhi script), spoken in India and Pakistan with 100 million native speakers
- Maori (Te Reo Māori), spoken in New Zealand with 160 thousand speakers
I have friends that can benefit from some of these languages being translated. I had an introduction to Zulu when I was in graduate school.
Died in the House -- a useful tool?
Thomas Milton Tinney, Sr. made a comment to one of my recent posts and suggested an interesting website, Died In House – Has Someone Died in Your House? Is this a new tool for genealogical research? Thomas' comment was as follows:
It is not promoted as a genealogy tool; however, it seems to me that anyone having any residential location in the United States, could clearly benefit, by obtaining a home history; relatives and occupants. The Died in House service is the first of its kind; it provides users with death records associated to a specific address. This seems to have tremendous potential, for the genealogy and family history community, especially for close knit neighborhoods, considering data obtained from obituary notices and death certificates.Subsequently, Tony Proctor made the following comment about the UK:
I'd like to suggest a generalisation of this topic James. There is a homes-based collaborative site in UK too called MyHomesPast.Tony also explains his thoughts about the program in another Google+ post:
MyHomesPast is a collaborative site allowing people to create a pictorial history of the homes they've lived in, including details of former residents and timelines for the properties. This is one of the forms of local history that I mentioned as falling outside of traditional genealogy but having a strong overlap with it - hence my use of the preferred term micro-history. The site was only launched in 2012 and so has a few teething troubles, such as requiring a mandatory postal code. This automatically eliminates many of the properties that were demolished during the slum clearance projects of the 1960-70's in England, and leaves people like myself unable to use it. Still, this is the way things are going and I hope the site succeeds.
This is an interesting avenue of research, but here in Arizona there are some strange obstacles to this type of endeavor. It is currently impermissible for real estate sales people to mention that anyone died in a house to a potential purchaser. In Arizona you are not required to disclose if your home has been the site of a natural death, suicide, homicide or any other crime classified as a felony. So even if the above websites became viable options, where are they going to get their basic information?
I have been heavily involved in Arizona real estate law and actually had a real estate license for a while and I cannot think of anyway I could find out whether or not someone had died in a house here in Arizona other than by chance. Here is a copy of my Great-grandfather's death certificate. He fell and was injured at his daughter's house in Gilbert, Maricopa, Arizona on 13 March 1935 and died on 21 March 1935. Look carefully and see if you can find the address or the location of where he died?
Guess what? There is nothing on this death certificate giving the address of either the site of the accident or the place where he died. Of course, this may be entirely different in states other than Arizona, but I am sure that the home occupied by his daughter in 1935 is very likely still being used. Did he die at home or in a hospital? By the way the death certificate says "If death occurred in a hospital or institution give its NAME instead of street number." Neither of these is present on this death certificate.
Just a thought.
What is Digital Preservation and why do I care?
From time to time, the online genealogical community produces a wave of posts about backing up files. But we all need to take one further step and that is to be concerned about digital preservation. Simply put, we need to be concerned that the backup files we have on our flash drives, external hard drives and online cloud storage don't become obsolete. There are multiple pathways to the perdition of losing files through changing file formats and operating systems and any one of those paths could render your carefully backed-up files unreadable. This issue is sort-of a background problem that I regularly face, both from my own systems as well as from those of the people I talk to in classes and at conferences.
I believe I have previously told the story of my own challenges in keeping a computer-based journal for the past thirty years. The major part of the challenge happened just a few years ago right around this time of year, when I discovered that my old Microsoft Word files were not recognized by any of the programs I had on my computer. Fortunately, I found Open Office (presently I use Libre Office) was able to read the old files and I spent a week or two converting files and verifying the newly created files were complete and readable. In just the short time since that happened, I have already gone through a major issue in retrieving files from a crashed older iMac.
How many of you have updated any of you have updated your operating system recently? Can you count how many updates there have been since you last opened and verified some of your older files? Are you even aware that this is a problem? Here are some interesting websites in that regard:
I am not particularly picking on Microsoft, here is the same thing for the Apple OS X systems:
I believe I have previously told the story of my own challenges in keeping a computer-based journal for the past thirty years. The major part of the challenge happened just a few years ago right around this time of year, when I discovered that my old Microsoft Word files were not recognized by any of the programs I had on my computer. Fortunately, I found Open Office (presently I use Libre Office) was able to read the old files and I spent a week or two converting files and verifying the newly created files were complete and readable. In just the short time since that happened, I have already gone through a major issue in retrieving files from a crashed older iMac.
How many of you have updated any of you have updated your operating system recently? Can you count how many updates there have been since you last opened and verified some of your older files? Are you even aware that this is a problem? Here are some interesting websites in that regard:
I am not particularly picking on Microsoft, here is the same thing for the Apple OS X systems:
Let me propound another hypothetical situation. Most of us are mature adults and for some of us time passes rather quickly. Let's go back just five short years to about 2008. What computers were we using at that time? What operating system? Without digging into the history and reconstructing events, how many of us can even remember? How about ten years ago in 2003? Remember this event and the year: the first iPad was introduced on 3 April 2010. Now what do you think about computers and operating systems? I am already getting long sad stories from tablet computer users about the inability to retrieve data and failing apps on older tablet computers.
Now, if for some reason, you can easily answer my two questions above because you are still using the same computer and the same operating system, you are living a much more dangerous data life than I could possibly endure. But think about this, there are a huge number of genealogists who are still depending entirely on a program that was discontinued in 2002! That is Personal Ancestral File or PAF. How many of us still have PAF on our current computer? How long will any computer be able to read those files?
Obviously, I am writing about two separate issues: changing hardware technology (i.e. new computers) and changing operating system and application program changes. Concern about both of these areas is what is being talked about in the digital preservation circles. Leading that effort is the Library of Congress and the National Digital Information Infrastructure and Preservation Program.
The process of keeping our older files and their formats compatible with present technology is called "file migration." We are coming to the end of another year (2013, assuming I can still read a calendar) and it is time to think about a lot of things, but as genealogists it is time to think about data migration and preservation. Before we run out an buy that next new computer, maybe we should assure outselves that all the work we have done in past years is still readable and secure. Just a thought.
Monday, December 9, 2013
The Challenge of Changing Place Names
It doesn't take long for a genealogical researcher to find that place names can get rather slippery. Not only are we faced with boundary changes in cities, counties, states and countries, even very local areas can change their names from time to time. My own state of Arizona is no exception. Like most states in the the United States, it started out with only a few counties covering the vast areas of the state. The original four counties, Mohave, Yuma, Yavapai and Pima, were established in the relatively late year of 1864. Because of the size of the area and the lack of communication and, by the way, population, Arizona resisted the county forming zeal of some states in the west and elsewhere and ended up with only 15 counties at the present time.
Of course, the rather simple changes in Arizona are no match for states such as Pennsylvania and New York and other Eastern States. The entire United States is also no match for almost any place in Europe, simply because of the time periods and changes in international boundaries that have occurred. To add to the overall genealogical confusion, many inexperienced (and some experienced) genealogists persist in apply current place names to events that occurred at time periods when the names were unknown or simply did not apply.
This lack of correspondence between dates and places has a disastrous effect on research. Ignorance of boundary changes runs rampant among the name collectors and others who lack the background to even be aware of the problem. As I teach classes, I regularly repeat the admonition to record the name of the place as it was at the time of the event, only to have questions and surprise from the class participants. I could launch off into a tirade about the lack of historical knowledge of residents of the United States generally, but for the time being I will refrain.
Trying to find out the name of the county at the time of an event is a rather trivial issue. Online tools, such as the Newberry Atlas of Historical County Boundaries, make tracking county changes relatively easy. One of the very first things I do when I talk to someone about an ancestor for the first time is to take a few minutes to verify the state and county boundaries at the time period in question. Frequently, the county named in the researcher's records is wrongly identified.
Why is all this important? The answer is tautological, genealogically significant records are recorded at or near the time and place the event occurred and in the jurisdiction at the time. If an even occurred in a location when there was a subsequent boundary change the records could have gone to different places. The possibilities can be stated as follows:
Of course, the rather simple changes in Arizona are no match for states such as Pennsylvania and New York and other Eastern States. The entire United States is also no match for almost any place in Europe, simply because of the time periods and changes in international boundaries that have occurred. To add to the overall genealogical confusion, many inexperienced (and some experienced) genealogists persist in apply current place names to events that occurred at time periods when the names were unknown or simply did not apply.
This lack of correspondence between dates and places has a disastrous effect on research. Ignorance of boundary changes runs rampant among the name collectors and others who lack the background to even be aware of the problem. As I teach classes, I regularly repeat the admonition to record the name of the place as it was at the time of the event, only to have questions and surprise from the class participants. I could launch off into a tirade about the lack of historical knowledge of residents of the United States generally, but for the time being I will refrain.
Trying to find out the name of the county at the time of an event is a rather trivial issue. Online tools, such as the Newberry Atlas of Historical County Boundaries, make tracking county changes relatively easy. One of the very first things I do when I talk to someone about an ancestor for the first time is to take a few minutes to verify the state and county boundaries at the time period in question. Frequently, the county named in the researcher's records is wrongly identified.
Why is all this important? The answer is tautological, genealogically significant records are recorded at or near the time and place the event occurred and in the jurisdiction at the time. If an even occurred in a location when there was a subsequent boundary change the records could have gone to different places. The possibilities can be stated as follows:
- The records stayed in the existing jurisdictional entity
- The records moved to the new jurisdictional entity
- The records were archived in another location
- The records were destroyed
This covers most of the iterations, but there are always unexpected results. Of course, tracking the records is a different challenge if you are talking about a county boundary change in the United States and, on the other hand, an international boundary change between Germany, Poland and Russia. Conquering empires had and have a tendency to change all the names of all the places as well as the boundaries of local and national subdivisions. If you would like to see a huge number of articles on the subject, just do a Google search on "changing political boundaries."
I have often estimated, from my own experience, that fully 2/3 of the so-called "brick wall" problems in genealogy are caused by searching for records in the wrong place. Before searching for names and dates, genealogy should be primarily a search for accurate places. Many seemingly benign issues turn into major obstacles when the researchers ignore geography and assume that the places named in the records they have from their aunt or grandmother or whoever are correctly stated.
It would be nice to waive a magic wand and have these geographically related problems disappear, but that will not happen. But one thing is certain, when the baby was born, the event happened at one point and time on the face of the earth (unless the mother was in a moving ship, train, car or airplane or other conveyance). No, I do not wish to get into the details of determining where the baby was born if the airplane was flying over three or four different states. I do have a similar issue in my own family, one of my daughters was born in a place that no longer politically exists.
Recently, I have suggested that any strictly accurate genealogical reference to a location should include the geographic coordinates where the event occurred so that present and future researchers can accurately evaluate the probability that the event occurred at that location. Most of the newer genealogy programs now available have the capability of attaching the coordinates to every event. If we all started doing this, the ambiguity of the places of events would very slowly evolve into other issues.
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