Who Owns the Genealogy Companies -- An Update -- Part Four

In the previous posts in this updated series on the ownership of the online genealogy companies, I have focused on some of the associated issues. This post will focus on the United Kingdom based company known as "findmypast.com." Note that the logo for this company is all in lower case letters, but I have noticed that recently they are referring to their own company with an initial capital letter as in "Findmypast.com."

As a side note, in moving to Utah, I now live and work in a genealogical environment that is pretty much saturated with references to FamilySearch.org. Surprisingly, it is now more than a year ago that we began our move to Utah. During that year, I have found some increase in the local community's awareness of online programs in addition to FamilySearch.org, but that awareness does not generally extend to familiarity or actual involvement in doing research using the programs. In most cases, with a few exceptions, genealogists who were already involved with other online databases, including Findmypast.com, Ancestry.com, MyHeritage.com or AmericanAncestors.org and who are members of The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints, have taken advantage of the partnership opportunities offered by FamilySearch.org, but by and large those less involved still have not. I also see that even if the members have signed up for the programs, few know how to use them effectively. For this reason, with the exception of Ancestry.com and probably because of its extensive advertising, I almost never field any questions about the other programs. In fact, I do not remember having a single question about either Findmypast.com or AmericanAncestors.org recently.

I suspect that this lack of awareness extends to the genealogical community outside of Utah also. Now, if you are reading (or listening to) this blog post, you are probably not one of the people I am referring to. I deal primarily with people who are involved in genealogy or family history at a very basic level and are not usually involved online. For example, I talk to very few people who are involved in their family history that are even aware that genealogy related blogs even exist. I raise this issue in part for the reason that at this level, most of the patrons I deal with at the Brigham Young University Family History Library are surprised that there are companies other than FamilySearch.org and Ancestry.com, much less interested in the ownership of these companies. For example, I commonly find people who are surprised to learn that FamilySearch is a separate corporation owned by the Church.

Now, back to the issue of the ownership of Findmypast.com. According to to the Company History, the company began in 1965 "when a small group of professional genealogists and heir hunters in London, England form what was then known as Title Research." The organization known as Title Research started a "computerized version of the paper General Register Office England and Wales birth, marriage and death records for its in-house researchers to use. The project is named "1837 online"." The 1837online.com website went online in 2003. See Company History.

The company known as 1837online.com became a separate business owned by the Title Research Group which was rebranded as Findmypast in 2006. In 2007, Scotland Online, part of the large Scots publishing company, D.C. Thomson and Co. Ltd, headquartered in Dundee, Scotland acquired Findmypast. Quoting from its website about D.C. Thomson and Co. Ltd, "The company publishes newspapers, magazines and books and has diversified into new media, digital technology, retail, radio and television through investment interests."

Again, quoting from the D.C. Thomson website,

The wider DC Thomson Group includes global genealogy company findmypast, leading IT business services provider brightsolid, global book publisher Parragon Books and magazine publishers This England, Shortlist Media and Puzzler Media. DC Thomson Ventures is the venture capital arm of the company focusing on early and later stage investment across the digital media, education, advertising and retail markets.

The genealogy websites are owned by an entity named DC Thomson Family History. The websites include the following:

• Findmypast.com
• The British Newspaper Archive
• Genes Reunited
• Mocavo
• Lives of the First World War
• ScotlandsPeople

Presently, Findmypast.com is aggressively acquiring and digitizing huge collections of records. The latest project is the 1939 Register for England and Wales – the only surviving survey of the population of England and Wales between 1921 and 1951 – after being awarded the contract by The National Archives. See Company History.

Here are the previous posts in this series:

http://genealogysstar.blogspot.com/2015/04/who-owns-genealogy-companies-update.html
http://genealogysstar.blogspot.com/2015/03/who-owns-genealogy-companies-update_29.html
http://genealogysstar.blogspot.com/2015/03/who-owns-genealogy-companies-update.html

Revisiting the ethics of photo manipulation or "restoration" Part Three

 Unknown Photograph from the Margaret Godfrey Jarvis Overson Photographic CollectionAs

In this segment of the series on photo manipulation or restoration, I would like to address the issue of the use of the term "ethics," I mentioned in the title. A question was asked last night at the Brigham Young University Family History Library about altering a recent photograph taken of a grave marker. In this case, the photo originated as a digitized image. Because of this question, I realized that I needed to be more specific in the application of the concepts that I have been discussing.

My concerns deal primarily with historic photographs on paper or in negatives. The issues involve the process of digitizing a paper or physical photograph and then altering the photograph to conform with present sensibilities. When I say "physical photograph" I'm referring to the even older processes of Tintypes and Daguerreotypes and the subsequent paper photographs. These photographs are historical artifacts. They exist in one place at one time. If they are lost, there is no way to replace the image. This contrasts with the ephemeral nature of the digital image which can exist in multiple copies, in multiple locations at once. Although there are preservation issues in both instances.

How does the concern for preservation become an "ethical" issue? The word "ethics" is a very slippery term. It has multiple layers of meaning. Ethics is sometimes defined in terms of a moral value system. For many years, as a practicing attorney I was governed by the Arizona Bar Association Rules of Professional Conduct. These rules have been adopted by the Arizona Supreme Court and are binding on all practicing attorneys. Many of the Rules of Professional Conduct imposed on attorneys have little or nothing to do with an abstract concept of "morality."  Of course, I am in no way suggesting that the issues involved in the preservation of historical artifacts are primarily motivated by a sense of morality. However, there are implications regarding honesty, a moral issue, when we represent an image to be factual when it is actuality highly modified.  Likewise, the issues I'm raising about altering historical photographs are not necessarily moral issues, they are however serious issues as to what is considered good versus bad behavior from the standpoint of historical preservation, just as in the law the Rules of Professional Conduct deal with practical as well as moral issues.

Permit me to illustrate some of the issues involved with a hypothetical's situation. Let's suppose that your car was involved in a rather extensive accident. You decide to repair the automobile as cheaply as possible. Your repairs consist primarily of filling in the damaged portions with a substance referred to as "Bondo" rather than spend the money to replace the expensive parts. Shortly after the accident, you decide to sell the car and you fail to notify the purchaser about the accident or the repairs made. Do you feel that you have an ethical responsibility to disclose an accident to your car when you sell it to a new buyer? Why or why not?

The car in the illustration is in reality no different than an historical artifact. In fact, minor repairs using Bondo are done every day throughout the country. There is nothing unethical about using the product. Likewise, there is nothing per se unethical about using Photoshop to retouch photos. The ethics of the matter come into play when the program or the Bondo are used to change an existing condition that should be disclosed to a potential purchaser or, in the case of a photograph, a potential viewer. Further, in the case of a photograph, is it really sufficient to merely notify viewers that the photograph may have been altered from the original?

Let me give another example using a hypothetical situation. Let's suppose that you find a journal written by an ancestor. Unfortunately, the ancestor is rather blunt and uses currently unacceptable language and makes references that are crude and offensive. As a matter of fact, this is exactly the case with some of the information that I have received from my own ancestors. Publication of the material would be very offensive today but was socially acceptable at the time. Should I clean up the material? Should I simply refuse to publish it? Should I edit the material and ignore any reference to the edited portions? Should I edit the material and disclose that the material has been edited? These are the same exact questions that should be asked when a photograph is altered. Rather than being socially unacceptable the image may simply be scratched or hard to view.

What about the situation where the photograph is otherwise viewable but needs to be "enhanced" to view more of the details? Where do you draw the line on the changes that would be made to a photograph without providing the original for comparison? What good does it do to tell me that a photograph is been altered if I have no way of viewing the original to see the extent of the alterations?

In my dealings with archives, I have been repeatedly advised to make no changes to the original photographs or documents. That is no changes not just avoiding major changes. In one case the repository was open to straightening the photos but no other changes were allowed. Why is this the case? I am reminded of my many visits to reconstructed historical locations. In fact, there is a cottage industry in many locations in the country fostered by historical reenactment and reconstruction. If I attend a reenactment of a Civil War battle, am I being led to believe that I am watching an actual Civil War battle? No. But unfortunately when a photograph is altered it may be practically impossible to tell that there has been any alteration from the original.

In summary, the topic of ethics with regards to the alteration of historical artifacts such as photographs, would be a system of rules to support the best possible preservation practices. I suggest that the ethics of photo preservation include the basic rule of making as few changes to the original as are absolutely necessary for preservation purposes.

This is an ongoing series and I expect that I will address the issue of the distinction between altering modern digitized photographs that originate in a digitized format and more historical photographs in the future.

Here are the previous posts in this series:

http://genealogysstar.blogspot.com/2015/04/revisiting-ethics-of-photo-manipulation_19.html
http://genealogysstar.blogspot.com/2015/04/revisiting-ethics-of-photo-manipulation_19.html

HistoryLines Offical Launch and Special Offer

Back at RootsTech 2015, I met and talked to the folks at HistoryLines.com. In a Press Release dated January 13, 2015, they announced the following:

 OSWEGO, Ill.—(PR Web)—Jan. 13, 2015—HistoryLines, a leading provider of historical solutions for genealogists and educators, today announced the official launch of historylines.com, a new website for users interested in genealogy and family history. The site allows anyone to better understand the lives of their forebears by describing the historical events and cultural influences that surrounded their lives. Users see their relatives in historical context with a personalized timeline and map, and can read a detailed, editable life sketch based on when and where their ancestor lived in history.  

“After several months of large-scale beta testing, we’re very excited to be able to offer the HistoryLines experience to the world,” says Jeff Haddon, HistoryLines co-founder. “HistoryLines addresses two major pain points in the genealogy research process: the scarcity of personal details that tell an ancestor’s life story, and the time it takes to compose a life sketch from research results.” According to Haddon, HistoryLines hopes to dramatically simplify that process for genealogists and family historians. 

The Special Offer is outlined as follows:

 “Anyone interested in giving HistoryLines a try can create their first two stories for free to explore all the features,” says Haddon. HistoryLines offers subscriptions at $9.99 per month or $59.00 per year. To encourage new users to try out the site, the company is offering 30% off new subscriptions forever with the promo code EARLYBIRD30. As long as the promotional subscriptions don’t lapse, the discount will continue indefinitely. The introductory offer is good through April 30, 2015. 

 From their product description,

HistoryLines.com provides an automatic, editable life sketch for your ancestors based on when and where they lived. What did your ancestors experience? What were their daily lives really like? Don’t have the elusive records that tell their personal story? HistoryLines can help!  

With a huge and growing database of historical events and descriptions, HistoryLines offers interactive timelines, maps, and narratives to help you learn more about your ancestors that mere names and dates. As you explore the events and cultural influences that impacted their daily lives, your ancestors will come to life in a way you’ve never experienced before.  

As of April 2015, HistoryLines provides historical insights back to 1600 A.D. for the following countries: United States, England, Ireland, Scotland, Wales, German and Denmark. Additional countries and centuries are in development, with Canada, France, Poland, Sweden and Finland coming soon.  

HistoryLines is available online at https://historylines.com

The program allows you to import a family tree from FamilySearch.org or upload a GEDCOM file. Here is a screenshot of my Grandfather and the timeline and story created by the program.

 The narrative from the timeline created is quite extensive. As long as researchers realize that the events outlined could have affected the ancestor and may suggest additional places to do research, I am impressed with the detail and the connections listed.

 

MyHeritage Instant Discoveries Spread Around the World

In a rather remarkable announcement, MyHeritage.com has made their new Instant Discoveries available to all MyHeritage.com members. Above is a screenshot of a new real-time map showing the Instant Discoveries as they are happening around the world. To see the actual map in use, see the following link:

http://www.myheritage.com/discovery-map

This takes the MyHeritage.com technology to a new level by providing the experience to all users of MyHeritage and enabling multiple individuals and photos to be added to family trees in just a few clicks.

Video on overlaying the Public Land Survey on Google Earth

This is the first video in a short series about how to research your ancestors using maps. I give specific instructions on how to see the area where your ancestors lived and how you can use this to find more information about them. This particular video begins with some comments about Google Earth, then moves to locating and overlaying the exact boundaries of a parcel.

The idea behind this particular presentation is the fact that new online tools allow you to identify a parcel of property from historical records and then, using the legal description of the property, apply the boundaries to a map or satellite image of the actual location. I also explore other programs that provide online maps of property boundaries.

This particular presentation deals with the United States Public Land Survey System aka the PLSS or Rectangular Survey System used in the states other than the original colonies and Texas. 

Here are the Links to the main websites referenced:

·      Google Earth -- https://www.google.com/earth/

·      Newberry Atlas of Historical County Boundaries --http://publications.newberry.org/ahcbp/

·      Bureau of Land Management, General Land Office Records – https://www.glorecords.blm.gov/default.aspx

·      EarthPoint.us -- http://earthpoint.us/

I also suggest looking at the following websites:

·      Tutorial on the Public Land Survey System Descriptions -- http://dnr.wi.gov/topic/forestmanagement/documents/plsstutorial.pdf

·      Montana Cadastral Mapping -- http://svc.mt.gov/msl/mtcadastral/

·      Cadastral Maps -- http://www.fao.org/docrep/006/v4860e/v4860e03.htm

·      Iowa Counties Historic Atlases -- http://digital.lib.uiowa.edu/atlases/

·      Michigan County Histories and Atlases -- http://quod.lib.umich.edu/m/micounty/

·      U. S. Indexed County Land Ownership Maps, 1860 – 1918 on Ancestry.com

If you want to get into more complex mapping, you can use the Plat Plotter -- http://platplotter.appspot.com/ to plot metes and bounds maps. I will be doing a class in May on this subject.  

Revisiting the ethics of photo manipulation or "restoration" Part Two

This is part two of my series on photo manipulation. The thrust of my main concerns about photo manipulation of any kind whatsoever is the preservation of historicity. Historicity is defined as follows:

Historicity is the historical actuality of persons and events, meaning the quality of being part of history as opposed to being a historical myth, legend, or fiction. Historicity focuses on the truth value of knowledge claims about the past (denoting historical actuality, authenticity, and factuality.) The historicity of a claim about the past is its factual status. See Wikipedia: Historicity.

 Today, photographs are ubiquitous, but originally, especially back in the 1800s and even into the early 1900s, many people had their photographs taken only a very few times, if at all, during their lifetimes. Photographs from this early time period then become irreplaceable historical artifacts. Also, in the absence of a negative, the only method of reproducing an image was to take a photograph of the original, as is shown in the above image. As would be expected, the quality and resolution of the second, reproducing photograph was much degraded. In addition, as noted by the use of thumb tacks to position the original, the process often resulted in physical damage to the original photograph.

Digital images create a unique photographic challenge. Although the issue of reproducibility is lessened, the existence of easily available methods of altering the images presents a whole panoply of additional dangers to the historicity of the "original" image. The desire to improve upon nature is almost irresistible. To be quite frank, I do not use or recommend the use of about 80% of the tools or effects available in the average photo manipulation program. Besides seriously compromising the historicity of the images, they are simply tacky.

Here are some examples of what I mean. This first image is taken directly from the original glass negative. The image was taken with a Canon D5 Mark II Camera using a Canon 35 mm lens. The negative image was then reversed in Adobe Photoshop to a positive image. Nothing else has been done to the image.

I could change the photo using the Adobe Lightroom program to bring out the detail and increase the contrast. Here is what my "improved" photo might look like. Do not ever experiment on the original photograph. In this case I am using a virtual copy of the original.

I am almost certain that if I took a vote, the improved image would get higher marks than the original. At this point, you could argue that I have done nothing that changes the historicity of the image. In fact, a further claim could be made that had the original photographer had the tools I have, she would have made all these changes to the original.

How about the following changes. Here I took the improved image above and added some of the available special effects from Google Picasa, a free photo program.

This raises the question. Where do I stop making changes. At what point have I left the realm of acceptable changes and crossed over into interpretation of the original. This discussion always seems to end with someone telling me about their old photo that had a huge tear or crease across the ancestor's face and how they or some one else took the defect out of the photo and made it look really nice. If I am able to take a faded image and make it visible, is this unacceptable?

I will carry on and write about these issues in the next installments.

For the first installment see:

http://genealogysstar.blogspot.com/2015/04/revisiting-ethics-of-photo-manipulation.html

Burned Counties, Record Gaps and the End of the Line

Every so often, I get a comment from a researcher that their search for a certain ancestor has been frustrated by the fact that the courthouse in the county where the family lived had burned down. In other instances, I hear complaints about record gaps. The most common of these complaints deals with the inability to find an ancestor in a particular year of the U.S. Federal Census. Both of these types of complaints highlight the fact that genealogical researchers are generally extremely nearsighted in their research efforts.

My off-hand comment to the burned county folks is a question. Oh, I guess your family must have lived tax free in that county since the courthouse burned? Obviously, if the records were destroyed, the county could not have had any basis for collecting taxes! I would realistically venture to say that this was very highly unlikely. So what happened to enable the county to continue to collect taxes and manage its affairs? In short, the records were reconstructed from other sources.

The example of the inability to find a family in a particular U.S. Census record is trivial in the extreme. Yes, people did get missed. But the real reason is usually as simple as the fact that the indexing was not done accurately. A search of the entire record for a given locality, will sometime reveal the missing family. But the real answer is so what? The fact that the issue is even raised points out a situation in common with the burned county issue. Focusing on one category of records is usually fatal to genealogical research.

We have a multitude of classes taught every year about breaking down genealogical brick walls. All of those classes have one thing in common: they preach about expanding your research into a variety of records, rather than relying on the old and sometimes weary core of overused and overrated genealogical records.

If you find yourself moaning or groaning about the loss of a certain class of records, I suggest starting with the FamilySearch Research Wiki article entitled, "Burned Counties Research." This is also good reading for those who are suffering angst because of their inability to find an ancestor in any particular record. The statement made on the first page of this series of articles is important:

We cannot make missing records re-appear, but we CAN learn to make progress without them.

On the Burned Counties Research Wiki page there is a list of the "Mental Preparation and Tools for Success." I think this is a helpful list of suggestions, although I take serious exception with some of the items on the list. In fact, my own list would be considerably differently structured. However, I hesitate to re-write the Research Wiki with my own ideas, because they vary so much from what is normally taught by other genealogists.

The main reason for my departure from the "standard" method of approaching these problems is the obvious "paper-based" bias of the article. But the fundamental differences are based on the fact that the concept of a "research log" needs updating. This comment will be expanded in a subsequent post. The discipline outlined in the "traditional" approach to loss or unavailability of records is focused on becoming more detail oriented. My focus is on expanding your awareness of the types of records that are available. From my viewpoint, the methodology outlined misses the entire issue. For example, I suppose the courthouse contained all the copies of all the newspapers printed in the county?

Years ago, there was a cartoon by Gary Larson of the Far Side that shows a boy pushing on the door of the Midvale School for the Gifted when right above his head there is a sign that says "PULL." This cartoon was prominently displayed in our home for about thirty years. It represents a very real condition and one of my recurrent disabilities: our inability to understand the obvious. The most important statement on the Research Wiki Burned Counties page is the following:

When a record goes missing, there may be some other records available with the same information.

That is my mantra.