Place Names -- U.S. vs. United States

Regularizing place names has become an issue with the introduction of huge international databases like New FamilySearch (NFS). One of the obvious issues is whether to use the designation "USA" or "United States" or nothing. NFS has a "Standardized Place Names" function built into the program. Anytime a place name is edited or added the program suggests a standardized place name. This list of standardized places is also available separately and outside the program in the FamilySearch Labs Website. The program is called Standard Finder and it is a simple look up program with some very useful added features, that gives the standardized place name for any location typed into the find box.

If Standard Finder is able to locate the place, there is a Resources tab that will look for the place in Google Earth, Google Maps and ArcReader. The maps have clickable links to the holding of the Family History Library Catalog.

Other programs use different standards. RootsMagic has one of the most elaborate geographic database programs. The program not only links to standard place names but also geo locates any place name in the database by latitude and longitude. Ancestral Quest allows some editing of place names, but is not nearly as versatile. Legacy Family Tree is somewhere in between.

None of these standardized programs deals with the idea that an event should be placed at the location that existed as of the time the event occurred. This rule preserves the historical names rather than the modern name. One reason for preserving historical names is to reflect the possible jurisdictional location of the original records. If you arbitrarily select the "standard" name, the original location and its historical context will be lost.

This is a subject that needs more development and discussion.

Beyond PAF -- lineage linked database programs

Because of the backing by The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints (LDS or Mormon) Personal Ancestral File (PAF) has become the dominant platform for storing genealogical data. The utility of PAF has been guaranteed by the implementation of the Genealogical Data Communications Standard or GEDCOM. GEDCOM is an Extensible Markup Language or XML. If you would like to see what kind of information is stored in a PAF GEDCOM file, try opening a file with a word processor or text editor. For example, a .ged file will readily open in Microsoft Word or most any other word processing program. PAF normally stores its file in a .paf format, a file format specific to PAF, howver, any file in PAF can be exported into the GEDCOM format through the export function in the program.

Because the information stored in the PAF program can be exported to a GEDCOM or .ged file, that information can be shared with any other program using the same standard file format. Many other third party programs use the GEDCOM standard. To name a few, RootsMagic, Ancestral Quest, Legacy, Family Tree Maker, Reunion for the Macintosh, Family Origins, MacFamilyTree and many more.

As the GEDCOM standard was developed, the standard was designed to recognize a large number of data types. However, not all of these data types were used by PAF. Other programs used more or less of the data types in their particular implementation of the GEDCOM standard. As a result, transferring data between programs may or may not include all of the fields in any particular program. For example a Legacy file exported to a GEDCOM and then imported into PAF will contain only the data that the two programs recognize in common.

Some programs avoid this problem with importing PAF files by allowing the user to import a PAF file directly without converting it to a GEDCOM file. For example, Legacy Family Tree will import files directly from PAF and from Ancestral Quest.

The purpose for this discussion is to illustrate that nearly all of the currently available genealogical database programs will import the information from PAF, either directly or through a GEDCOM file. If you chose to move your information from your existing PAF file to some other program, you can likely do so without losing any of your PAF data. However, once you begin to enter new information into the new program, it may be that some of that data would be lost if you again try to transfer the information back into PAF format.

PAF has not been updated since version 5.2.18 as of August 2002. There are currently no plans to update the program. You may wish to begin looking at using an alternative before the current PAF program no longer works with the current operating systems of the computer. This has already happened with the Macintosh version of the program. The old program of Personal Ancestral File for the Macintosh version 2.3.1 will no longer run on the newer Macintosh computers.

FamilySearch Affiliates and Product Certification

Recently, the start-up page for New Family Search included a heading called "More Great Products." The button says, "Click here for free, trial, and other products for new FamilySearch." Clicking on the button, takes you to a page entitled "FamilySearch Affiliates and Product Certification."

Presently, the only products listed are Ancestral Quest, Charting Companion, Family Insight, Generation Maps, Get My Ancestors, Grow Branch and RootsMagic 4. In the case of RootsMagic 4, if you click on the link, you will soon find that RootMagic 4 is not yet available, but if you buy RootsMagic 3, you will get a free upgrade. Ancestral Quest version 12.1 is presently available however, as are the remaining products.

Notably missing from this listing, as yet, are Legacy Family Tree software and Family Tree Maker 2009. Since the roll out of New Family Search is still in progress and Utah and Idaho are still not on the system, and the program is presently limited to member of The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints (LDS or Mormons) it is likely that additional programs will not appear until the final version of New Family Search (Family Tree) is introduced to the whole genealogical community including those who are not members of the LDS Church

Stay tuned for more developments.