Triple News from FamilySearch: Photos, Stories and WorldCat

Without any fanfare or warning, photos imported into FamilySearch's Photos program began appearing linked in to FamilySearch.org's Family Tree. The heretofore black photo slot next to the name of the individual on the individual information pages began populating with photos previously uploaded. Here is a screen shot of one of my ancestors showing the inserted photo:

Pretty cool! Anyway, now we have to go choose the appropriate picture to appear in miniature in the Family Tree. Looks like more work. FamilySearch Photos also has a link to add a story about your ancestors also. You can also attach a photo to your story. It looks like you could type the story right into FamilySearch Photos but it is probably easier to copy and paste from a word processing program.

Another surprise announcement from the Online Computer Library Center, Inc. or OCLC, the company that has the WorldCat.org catalog indicates that the FamilySearch Family History Library in Salt Lake City, Utah will soon be included in the WorldCat.org catalog. Hooray for WorldCat.org. If you aren't familiar with WorldCat.org, you should be. It is a combination of over 72,000 world wide library catalogs and has nearly everything that ever found its way into a library. I like to play, stump WorldCat and try and find a book that is not listed. It is very hard to do.

The Family History Library has not been part of this almost universal system for cataloging materials to their great loss. It looks like that loss is about to be remediated and we will have access to the contents of the Family History Library catalog when we search for other genealogically related items on WorldCat.org.

Here is a link to OCLC Press Release. I will spare you by not copying the entire long release but I do recommend that you look at this if you have ever done any research online.

OCLC and FamilySearch partnership will combine resources for richer genealogy research experience

So three big stories in one day. The addition of photos to Family Tree, the addition of stories to FamilySearch Photos and the addition of the FamilySearch Family History Library catalog to WorldCat.org. Quite a nice surprise.