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Sunday, June 3, 2012

FamilySearch Trees on Archives.com?

During a presentation at the Colorado Family History Expo, Don Anderson of FamilySearch made a reference to FamilySearch.org Tree records on Archives.com. Hmm. Let's take a look at what this might mean.

The FamilySearch Tree records are primarily user contributed records. As explained by FamilySearch.org:
Family Trees contains millions of lineage linked genealogies. These pedigrees come from Ancestral File, the Pedigree Resource File (PRF) and other patron submissions.
Although "other patron submissions" aren't identified, here are the descriptions of the Ancestral File (AF) and the Pedigree Resource File (PRF) from FamilySearch:
Ancestral File is a computerized collection of genealogies that links families into pedigrees, showing ancestors and descendants. It contains information for about 40 million people from throughout the world. It shows individuals’ names, family relationships, dates and places of birth, marriage, and death. Ancestral File was created from thousands of user submitted pedigree charts, family group sheets, and GEDCOM files. Submissions were merged to eliminate duplication and submitted corrections were applied to eliminate errors.

  • The current site contains 40 million, 5 million more than the previous website.
  • Information is not displayed for living individuals, including submitters.
Pedigree Resource File (PRF) is a growing collection of user submitted genealogies. It shows individuals’ names; family relationships; and dates and places of birth, marriage, and death. No merges, corrections, or additions are made to genealogies submitted to Pedigree Resource File.
Going to Archives.com, I find the following:
Public Family Trees
Archives.com and FamilySearch International
ca.1500 - Present
500,000,000
This collection is a compilation of public family trees from Archives.com and community trees from FamilySearch International. Family tree records may include names, birth, death, marriage dates, etc, in addition to family relationships. These records date from ca. 1500 to present.
Pedigree Resource File entries have been available both online and on a set of CD/DVDs for many years. Very recently, FamilySearch opened the PRF submissions by allowing submitters to delete their old files. Here are some questions:

Do current submissions on the Submit Trees portion of the FamilySearch Tree search end up in Archives.com?

If I delete an old out-of-date submission, will the corresponding file be deleted from Archives.com?

Archives.com claims 500 million records in their shared Public Family Trees. How many of these are from the AF and the PRF? Where do the rest of the records come from? Who submitted these records and when were they submitted? Archives.com claims to have "public family trees" submitted to Archives.com. Where and how do you "submit" records to Archives.com?

By the way, Archives.com claims to have 200,000,000 living people records. Interesting.

Now, think about this. All this ends up in Ancestry.com because of the recent purchase of Archives.com. Were you aware that your Ancestral File contributions would end up in Ancestry.com?



1 comment:

  1. Dear James,
    I am very anxious to hear what responses you've received from FamilySearch. I am hoping this "on Archives.com" is only an index, which would be redone periodically pointing to the single location of the data on FamilySearch.org. Otherwise, I am going to be VERY upset.

    Myrt

    ReplyDelete