New FamilySearch -- the end is in sight

Members of the The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints in the Salt Lake Temple District will have their first official access to the New FamilySearch program on November 16, 2009. Thirty Stakes will gain access on that date leaving approximately 38 remaining Stakes for a future date. This may well end one of the longest, if not the longest, software introductions in the history of computers. It has been over two years since the first Stake received authorization to log onto to the huge online database.

At the same time, many users were notified of another Beta test of New FamilySearch. There have been several significant changes to the program recently, even though the last official list of new features dates back to August of 2009. The newest feature changes involve the process of preparing names for Family Ordinance Requests. It is now mandatory to check for duplicates, the whole process is no longer optional.

It is interesting to watch the data on the program. From time to time I get on New FamilySearch and check my ancestor's files. I can actually see changes from day to day and week to week and people duplicate ordinances and add more copies of birth, death and burial variations. It is sort of like watching weeds grow in the your front yard. If the program was supposed to help avoid duplication, it hasn't gotten there yet. I see duplicate ordinance dates for individual ancestors long after the introduction of New FamilySearch. It is a lot easier to see all the additional changes by using one of the third-party database programs like Ancestral Quest or RootsMagic.