Closing in on Kerlin's Well

In past posts I have been recounting my efforts to find the location of Kerlin's Well. Using tools available on the Internet, I have finally pin pointed the exact location on a topographical map. My search began with a photograph in a book written by my Great-uncle George S. Tanner. Uncle George had a photograph of rock upon which my Great-grandfather, George's father, had carved his name in block letters with the date, "1877." The directions to the location were very vague and my efforts to find out more information were not successful.

My wife and I drove out of Mesa, north almost 200 miles, stopping along the way to do research at National Forest offices and local libraries. After spending most of a day driving out into the northern Arizona desert, hiking up canyons and looking for the rock, we ended our trip unsuccessfully. I did find a book listed in WorldCat.org the referred to Kerlin's Well. When I returned to Mesa, I got online and ordered the book through the Mesa Public Library Inter-library Loan.

Yesterday, I received the book and after analyzing the maps and directions located the site on a topographical map. It turned out that driving around in the desert of dirt roads, we had gotten close but not close enough to the location of the carved rock. By matching locations given in the book with those on the map, I now believe I have located the canyon and thereby located the rock. Now, we are back in the planning stage, trying to figure out a day when we can drive back to the north country and try our hand at the dirt roads again.

Using information from New FamilySearch

A few days ago, I had a patron at the Mesa Regional Family History Center ask me about a problem she was having with New FamilySearch. She had a huge pile of printouts from her Personal Ancestral File program and was methodically going through each one and comparing the information to that found in New FamilySearch. She was particularly interested in any of the entries that appeared to be incomplete or missing LDS Ordinance information either in her documents or in New FamilySearch. I made an offhand suggestion that her work could be a lot easier by using one of the available genealogy programs (like Ancestral Quest, RootsMagic or Legacy Family Tree) that helps automate the process of copying the records and avoided making handwritten changes to her documents. Before I even finished making the suggestion, she told me off and said she didn't want to learn anything about a program, was not interested in a program and didn't care to further carry on the conversation with me at all. That was the end of my help.

Well, what information does New FamilySearch have to offer? And, is it worth the effort to look at the information that is available? Is New FamilySearch a "source" for genealogical research?

First and foremost, except for being the original source for information on LDS Ordinance dates and places, all of the remaining information in New FamilySearch is derivative and not primary, or even secondary source information. None of the information displayed in the pedigree and individual information views is tied to an actual source. Even though there is a place to check for sources, none of those "sources" listed are tied to any event or information in the main file unless by accident the source information contains a connected reference to specific facts. This is not a new issue. We have lived with the same issues regarding the information contained the FamilySearch Ancestral File and to some extent in the International Genealogical Index (IGI).

Now back to the patron. In the act of comparing the information she had in her file with that in New FamilySearch, I see no problems at all. But by failing to recognize the nature of the information in New FamilySearch, she was in danger of entering a lot of inaccurate or incorrect data into her records, without any substantiation. After looking at the patron's file for just a few minutes, I quickly determined that she was not searching for duplicate records on New FamilySearch and that even the Ordinance data she was obtaining was suspect. When I tried to show her that there may be duplicates in the New FamilySearch file, she wasn't interested. She was intent on filing in the little boxes on her printed Family Group Records or marking them blank and was asking for help because she had come to her first instance of contradictory information. It was not that she wanted to do research to resolve the question, she just wanted me to make the question go away. I could see that I was not going to make a lot of headway.

If the Ordinance data was "missing" from New FamilySearch she was immediately printing up a Family Ordinance Request form and printing the Ordinance cards. Unfortunately, I find the activity, if not always the attitude, duplicated again and again, not just with New FamilySearch but with Ancestry.com and many other sites that share users information online.

This instance brought to mind the rule that you must always evaluate any source, even if you are just copying out information, for reliability, completeness, sufficiency and a few other factors I may have overlooked. Especially, in New FamilySearch where the information is not always directly attached to some specific source.

How can you use information from New FamilySearch? First and foremost, it is a program for submitting names for LDS Temple Ordinances and should be used to try to determine if the Ordinances have been done previously to avoid duplication. However, going through the data and simply clicking on green arrows and printing off Family Ordinance Requests will almost guarantee duplication. For those individuals just starting out exploring their genealogy, New FamilySearch is one place to get an idea of what information may have been obtained by other family members. Just as with any online database of family history, there may be leads and clues found by others that may benefit your actual research. But looking through New FamilySearch and copying out a bunch of names is not research.

I am sure I will have more to say about this subject since I am scheduled to help about 60 teenagers get started in New FamilySearch very shortly.

GenealogyWise -- all's well that ends well

Fast work and an immediate response from the staff at GenealogyWise seems to have stemmed the tide of spam for the time being. Thanks to their rapid response, the issue was resolved by having the blog posts reviewed before going online. I might suggest that given some time, there could be a way to automate that procedure by having a holding file where the titles and text could be reviewed more rapidly. It might be a good idea to require an image review or transcription before allowing anything to be posted, like FaceBook.

Spam blog posts take over GenealogyWise

GenealogyWise is a really dynamic and useful social networking site for genealogists. GenealogyWise is part of FamilyLink which if you keep tracing back through links, is basically Paul Allen and his staff who also run WorldVitalRecords and a lot more. Many of the members post all or part of their own blogs on the GenealogyWise blog posts. Lately, the blog posts coming through Google Reader have been hijacked by spam drug sellers. My Google Reader currently has six posts which appear to be from "Everyone's Blog Posts - Genealogy Wise" but are offers to buy drugs online. The poster in one case is identified as "belkennett3985." Clicking on show original item takes you to the GenealogyWise main page. A Google search on the poster shows that the profile on Genealogy Wise dated from one hour before.

What is happening is that spammers are using GenealogyWise to hijack the blog posting network and use the readers to send out spam to users to of the blog posts. When you follow the links back to GenealogyWise the profile cannot be found, because it is being changed by the spammer to use another profile.

If this continues, I may have to disconnect from reading GenealogyWise just to take control of my Reader account again.

What I have learned from genealogy blogs

I guess the first thing I have learned is that there are a lot more blogs than I have time to read. I keep finding new ones all the time and get more and more amazed at the tremendous variety of genealogical experiences. I have learned that blogging is takes the place of the old home town newspaper on an international scale. The posts give you insight into people's lives all over the world. Today's report on Google Analytics shows my posts being read in 39 countries. There are people spending significant time on my blog from places like Norway and Poland. Who would ever have guessed that?

It is still amazing to me how fast blog information can spread across the world. When I teach a class just one or two days after a major genealogical event, it seems as if most of the people already have heard the news. It is very hard to find out things before everyone else does. I read an interesting report in a blog yesterday and the counter on the site showed that hundreds of people had already read the post before I got to it. Now, one day later, 99,553 people had viewed the report. Information moves like a virus across the world.

One surprising thing I have learned, is just how relatively small the real genealogy population really is worldwide and because we are a small population, we can get to know people, even if it is only in a virtual sense. I was surprised at how many people I recognized from their blogs at the Mesa Regional Family History Expo.

One of the major things I have learned is a deep sense of humility at the tremendous knowledge and talent in the genealogy blogging community. There is always something to learn and always someone who knows more about a subject than I do. I also appreciate more how complex the world of records really has become. Maybe it was always complex, but it seems that the online digital world adds an extra dimension of challenge to the idea of research.

It is also hard, I have learned, to balance blogging with the rest of your genealogical life. Sometimes I feel like my head just can't adsorb any more information and then I find something new and even more challenging and off I go on another adventure in learning. I guess I am not ready to quit yet.

Genealogy on a Mac?

It has now been a number of months since I junked my PC and went back to working almost exclusively on an Apple Macintosh iMac. I say that my work is almost exclusive because I still own a PC Laptop from HP. I use the laptop to run my scanning station. I mentioned from time to time that I am running a program called Parallels Desktop. I have worked on literally hundreds of computers and owned dozens and I can say without reservation that the 2.66 GHz Intel Core i5 is the absolutely fastest and best computer I have ever owned. Now, that probably puts me right into the camp of the Apple fanatics (MacHeads) and technophiles in some people's view, but I believe that I am more into the computer-as-tool category.

Here was the problem over the years. Beginning about 15 years or so ago, almost all of the genealogy software programs were only available on the PC based systems. So despite the fact that I was highly into Apple products, I switched my primary machine to a PC/Microsoft Windows based machine. It also contributed to the change that my law office was completely PC based and I used Remote Desktop to telecommute. I upgraded my PCs various times but we always kept a second computer, a Macintosh, so we could work on a real computer from time to time. It also helped that we also ran (and run) a graphics design business which was and is entirely Mac based. Some of my Apple friends thought I had become a hieratic.

Meanwhile, Apple made the big change when they went with Intel based processors. Shortly after the change, Macs became more than compatible, they were essentially the same machines as PCs just running different software. Also the Mac OS became Unix based, making it more compatible with network services than the PCs which were still running Windows operating systems. (A lot of my friends and family switched to Linux, but that is another story). Eventually, all of the parts fell into place, the Macintosh computers could seamlessly connect to my office network with Microsoft Remote Desktop on the Mac and the computers themselves finally got fast enough to run an entire PC in emulation in a virtual machine environment (i.e. Parallels Desktop).

With all of those factors coming together, including the decrease in memory costs so that I could have a huge internal storage capacity, it only made sense (to me of course) that I could finally ditch the PCs and go back to a Mac only environment.

Now, how are things going? I won't say that running two different operating systems is an easy task. It is a little like juggling, a skill you need to cultivate. Fortunately, I can keep everything straight and I have only a little bit of trouble now and again with incompatibility. However, I attribute most of that incompatibility to the Windows 7 Operating System.

I would be very hesitant to recommend an iMac to anyone who want to run PC genealogy programs unless they are pretty far along in their understanding of computer operating systems. It is way more difficult that running either an Apple OS or a Windows environment by itself. All of the genealogy programs I have tried so far seem to run pretty well with a very few exceptions. If you want a computer to work on and you like graphics and other related subjects, you can't do better than a Macintosh. The genealogy programs available for a Mac only environment are very good. Even if you know little or nothing about technology and want to keep it that way, you may find yourself happier on a Macintosh. But if you are a single program person and that program is Personal Ancestral File, just keep working on your PC.

What's original about genealogy -- copyright speaking

If I make a list of the gravemarkers in a cemetery, will my list be protected by copyright? If I publish my genealogy file, will the publication have a copyright? If I publish a list of family names from the U.S. Census, will the list be copyrighted? The answer to all three questions is no unless you add your own original work to the product and even then, the public portions of the documents will not be subject to copyright.

U.S. Copyright Law, contained in Title 17 of the U.S. Code, provides that "works consisting entirely of information that is common property and containing no original authorship (for example: standard calendars, height and weight charts, tape measures and rulers, and lists or tables taken from public documents or other common sources)." Public documents and other such common sources are said to be in the "public domain." Works in the public domain include any works which are too old to have copyright protection. Some other reasons a work might be in the public domain include lack of proper notice, failure to renew, failure to comply with manufacturing requirements, being a sound recording fixed prior to U.S. protection, and lack of national eligibility, that is, the source nation and the United States did not then have a treaty relationship. One huge area of copyright exemption is anything produced by the U.S. government. See Section 105 of Title 17. Copyright protection is not available for any work of the United States Government, but the United States Government is not precluded from receiving and holding copyrights transferred to it by assignment, bequest, or otherwise.

Whether or not a work, including genealogical compilations is subject to copyright can be a very complicated question. The law has changed considerably over time in the U.S. as well as in other countries. Generally, you cannot take information or works in the public domain and make them subject to copyright protection.

So, looking at a genealogy file, very little of the information, unless of original authorship by the compiler, would be considered subject to copyright. In copyright law, there is a big difference between writing a history of your family using your own words, and copying information from public sources. As it states in Title 17, Section 103, "The copyright in a compilation or derivative work extends only to the material contributed by the author of such work, as distinguished from the preexisting material employed in the work, and does not imply any exclusive right in the preexisting material. The copyright in such work is independent of, and does not affect or enlarge the scope, duration, ownership, or subsistence of, any copyright protection in the preexisting material."

Whether or not a work is subject to copyright protection could be the subject of a lawsuit. For attorneys, copyright law is only part of a larger law practice that might include trademarks, tradenames and other topics and is known as intellectual property law. To avoid a claim or controversy, it is a good idea to obtain written permission to use any work that might be subject to a copyright claim.

Here are some good sources for information on copyright:

U.S. Copyright Office
Stanford University Libraries Copyright and Fair Use
University of Texas Copyright Crash Course
ninch Issue Resources