Free Irish Records from MyHeritage March 14 - 20, 2019

Free Irish Record March 14-20, 2019

From March 14 and until March 20, 2019, all MyHeritage users will have FREE access to all of the MyHeritage.com Irish record collections in honor of St. Patrick’s Day this year.

My RootsTech 2019 Experience

https://www.rootstech.org/

I am fairly certain that my RootsTech 2019 experience was far different than nearly everyone else attending the Conference. I have been attending the RootsTech Conferences since the very first one in 2011 except for the one last year when my wife and I were digitizing documents at the Maryland State Archives for FamilySearch on a mission for The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints. Of course, that first experience was far different than what we just experienced but the seeds of my own experience were planted at that first conference.

Over the years, my focus has changed. During the early years of the Conference, I presented and attended classes. Slowly, I began to focus more on interacting with the vendors in the Exhibit Hall and I stopped presenting classes and began to attend far fewer classes. Eventually, I became more involved with the vendors and began presenting for them at their booths or at what has become the Demo Theater. This year was a catch-up year. Since I missed my opportunity to talk to all the vendors, I focused on making contact with those with whom I had long-term relationships. 

My main focus was the booth for The Family History Guide. Because I am involved directly with the company, we had been preparing for RootsTech during the past year and I became instantly involved as soon as I returned to Provo, Utah from Maryland. We had a great response to the booth and the classes we taught. There are a few things we learned and will change next year but for the foreseeable future, I will be intensely involved with The Family History Guide. 

My second main area of focus was in working with and contacting the large online genealogy websites. I had a lot of contact with MyHeritage.com. Of course, I presented at their booth and will continue with acting as a speaker at the upcoming MyHeritage LIVE 2019 Conference in Amsterdam, Netherlands.

https://live2019.myheritage.com/

I enjoyed learning about all the new developments from MyHeritage and interacting with their wonderful staff. Special thanks to Gilad Japhet and Daniel Horowitz for their support.

I am always grateful for the help and support of FamilySearch. I have been a Blogger/Ambassador since the first Conference and have enjoyed their tremendous help and all the extras that have come my way as a result of publicizing the RootsTech Conferences. I was able to conduct some interviews in the Media Center and also get interviewed. Thanks to FamilySearch for the Conference and for the Media Center and the support. I also enjoyed visiting with Ron Tanner.

I had some wonderful conversations with the folks at Findmypast.com's booth. I was able to connect with some old acquaintances and meet some new people. I enjoyed talking with Jay Verkler and Alex Cox. Hope I have more contact in the future.

One of the most impressive things that happened at the Conference was meeting the people at the Afro-American Historical and Genealogical Society booth and the Sons & Daughters of the United States Middle Passage booth. What a great experience and opportunity. I hope that I can establish a mutually beneficial relationship with both these organizations.

I had almost a full week of other memorable experiences and opportunities to talk and came up with a huge list of blog post topics. I was especially touched by all the people who said hello. It was wonderful to see some of you for the first time since communicating over the internet. I hope I made a few new friends and immensely enjoyed seeing a few of my old friends.

See you next year at RootsTech 2020. 

Far-reaching Changes from MyHeritage’s The Theory of Family Relativity and AutoClusters: Part Three

The AutoCluster Tool from MyHeritage.com

Quoting from a blog post from MyHeritage.com entitled, “Introducing AutoClusters for DNA Matches,”

AutoClusters organize your MyHeritage DNA Matches into shared match clusters that likely descended from common ancestors. By grouping together DNA Matches who likely belong to the same branch and have a common ancestor, AutoClusters can be very helpful in shedding light on the relationship paths that connect you and your matches. By reviewing family trees of clustered matches, users can piece together the entire branch. Clusters are color-coded for convenience and are presented in a powerful visual chart, as well as in list format. 

This new tool was developed in collaboration with Evert-Jan Blom of GeneticAffairs.com, based on technology that he created, further enhanced by the MyHeritage team. Our enhancements include better clustering of endogamous populations (people who lived in isolated communities with a high rate of intermarriages, such as Ashkenazi Jews and Acadians), and automatic threshold selection for optimal clustering so that users need not experiment with any parameters.

The concept of using “clusters” has long been a staple of genealogical researchers for years. The basic idea is to identify something a group of items or people have in common and then build on that relationship to identify the group. Here is the formal definition of cluster analysis from Wikipedia: Cluster analysis.

Cluster analysis or clustering is the task of grouping a set of objects in such a way that objects in the same group (called a cluster) are more similar (in some sense) to each other than to those in other groups (clusters). It is a main task of exploratory data mining, and a common technique for statistical data analysis, used in many fields, including machine learning, pattern recognition, image analysis, information retrieval, bioinformatics, data compression, and computer graphics.

There is no one way to define and discover clusters. Genealogists can use DNA, as is used here in the MyHeritage app or religious affiliation, ethnic origin, occupation, or any combination of other ways of identifying groups. What is unique about the method demonstrated by MyHeritage is its application to a relatively large number of DNA testing results that are then graphically cross-related to each other to form actual graphics clusters. But at this point, the work for the genealogical researcher has just begun.

One immediately evident use for these graphically constructed clusters is to indicate people who may be candidates for applying The Theory of Family Relativity to discover the identity of the person who may be the common ancestor of the interrelated people in each cluster. Of course, the possibility of deriving the identity of the common ancestor depends on whether or not the target ancestor has already been identified by competent and well-documented research in a sufficient number of family trees. To do so accurately may involve an extension of both the AutoClusters and the supporting data for The Theory of Family Relativity.

With the numbers of individuals included in the larger clusters, it may be a rather long task to identify each member of the cluster and map them into a single family tree that may then show the direction the research should take to identify the common ancestor. Of course, a large enough documented family tree would immeasurably accelerate the process.

At the very least, these clusters from MyHeritage will assist traditional genealogical research in ways the can only be presently imagined.
Here are the other installments of this series:

Part One: https://genealogysstar.blogspot.com/2019/03/far-reaching-changes-from-myheritages.html
Part Two: https://genealogysstar.blogspot.com/2019/03/far-reaching-changes-from-myheritages_7.html

MyHeritage Adds New Norwegian Census Collections from 1891, 1900, and 1910

MyHeritage.com announced today the addition of the new Norwegian Census Collection from 1891, 1900, and 1910 with 6.8 million records. Quoting from the official announcement:

Tel Aviv, Israel & Lehi, Utah — MyHeritage, the leading global service for family history and DNA testing, announced today the publication of three census collections from Norway, from 1891, 1900, and 1910. MyHeritage has worked on digitizing these collections in partnership with the National Archives of Norway (Arkivverket). 

The collections provide robust coverage for Norway’s entire population during a span of two decades and include valuable family history information. While some former Norway censuses were conducted only in select trading centers, these records are more comprehensive. The 6.8 million new records document names, households, dates of birth, marital status, relationships, and residential conditions, making them vital for anyone wishing to explore their Norwegian origins. Their publication marks the first time that Norwegian record collections of such high quality and granularity are available online. 

The 1891 and 1900 collections include digital images of the original census documents, while the 1910 collection is an index consisting of transcribed records provided by the National Archives of Norway. The 1900 census was conducted by means that were, at the time, innovative: punch cards, which were then sorted and counted using electric tabulating machines. Of the 2.3 million records in the 1900 collection, 1.9 million records now have digital images of the original documents associated with the census index. Images of the remaining records will likewise be connected to the index in the near future.

For  those of us with Scandinavian ancestors and also for those of us working in the Brigham Young University Family History Library supporting patrons, this addition to the huge collections from Denmark and Sweden already on the MyHeritage.com website are revolutionizing our research methodologies. Here is the Norway SuperSearch page with the new collections,

I might also mention that MyHeritage.com has also added the completely searchable set of Danish Census Records from 1930 back to 1787. The searches of these records also come with translations.

Here is some additional information from the announcement:

Norwegian privacy laws restrict public access to census data for 100 years. Consequently, the 1910 census is the most recent one available to the public. This collection stands out as the first census conducted following the dissolution of Norway’s union with Sweden in 1905. It is also the first Norway census to record full birth dates, rather than only birth years. 

Users with family trees on MyHeritage will benefit from Record Matching technology that automatically reveals new information about their ancestors who appear in these records. 

With the release of these new collections, MyHeritage now offers approximately 34 million historical records from Norway, including census, baptism, marriage, and burial records. As the Scandinavian market leader for family history research and DNA testing, MyHeritage also offers 136 million records from neighboring Sweden and 105 million records from Denmark. MyHeritage is the only major genealogy company to provide its services and full customer support in all three Scandinavian languages, as well as in Finnish, and offers the greatest potential for new family history discoveries for anyone with Scandinavian origins. It also has the largest user base in Scandinavia and the largest collection of Scandinavian family trees. 

“The addition of these censuses from Norway is a testament to MyHeritage’s commitment to digitize and index historical records from all over the world and to make them easily accessible,” said Russ Wilding, Chief Content Officer at MyHeritage. “These records offer a bounty of new information, and they reflect important historical events that made a tremendous impact on life in Norway during these years. They are significant for anyone researching their Norwegian heritage.” 

The three new collections are now available on SuperSearch™, MyHeritage’s search engine for its 9.6 billion historical records. Searching the Norway census collections is free. A subscription is required to view the full records and to access Record Matches. 

Search the new census collections: www.myheritage.com/norway-census

6 Things that do Harm to your Old Photographs

Professional Online Photo Restoration Service

This is a guest blog post from Max Earnst Stockburger at Professional Online Photo Restoration Service of Germany. His company does the following:
Colorize old photos
Remove scratches and dust
Remove major scratches, cracks, and repair fragments
Fix destroyed emulsion and water marks.

The value of old photographs and how to store them
We all know photographs preserve invaluable memories, whether that be of loved ones, significant life moments, or simply reminders of our childhood neighborhood. For the moment it may seem like these photographs will preserve these memories forever but unfortunately, like any physical object, these mementos slowly fade over time until these recollections themselves eventually vanish too. But by taking steps to store your photographs properly you can greatly lengthen the life of your photos and memories. Even if you can already detect damages such as fading colors, watermarks, and ripped edges on your photos there is a solution. Instarestoration.com as a professional photo restoration service can restore the original beauty of your old images. Luckily we can use our magical powers to reverse even significant damages but so that you may slow down the process of deterioration of your old as well as new photographs we’d like to tell you of some simple tips to keep in mind.

The Bad Guys

Ultraviolet Light: Ever had a photograph hanging in direct sunlight for weeks, months, even years on end? Well, then you likely know what we are talking about. UV light is pretty much the most harmful thing to the colors of your photographs. Just as we put on sunscreen to protect ourselves from aggressive sunlight, the best way to preserve your photographs is to keep them somewhere the sun won’t reach them. If you want to display your pictures in direct sunlight make sure to use special filter glass that blocks these UV rays. What’s even better is to create a copy of that photograph and store the original in your archive. This is why it’s always best to have carefully stored physical as well as digital physical copies of your priceless images.

High temperatures and relative humidity: The emulsion of film is like the heart of a photograph. From this little strip magic happens and gives life to an image. The problem is that these emulsions are made out of organic materials such as gelatin making them vulnerable to extreme conditions. High room temperatures and humidity easily cause mold and fungus to propagate and slowly spread all over your photograph. To prevent this from happening keep your images stored in a cool and dry place. Preferably under 70°Fahrenheit (20°C) and 50% relative humidity.

Quality archival papers and materials: Appearances are deceptive: we like to think that products like paper made from trees are natural and harmless but in fact the production of these materials often involves many chemicals including acids and bleaches. These chemicals can slowly be released from paper or other storage materials over time and destroy your photographs. This is why it is important to be careful when shopping for archival products. Make sure to get acid and bleach-free papers and storage materials like folders. Unfortunately, there is no regulated universal standard for archival materials so always ask first before buying.

Metallic and Sharp Objects: This is commonsensical but also a common cause for damaged photographs. As above, proper and safe storage of your negatives and photographs is very important in preserving their beauty for as long as possible. Keep your photos separate from metallic and sharp objects including metal clips. These sharp and hard surfaces can easily crease, bend, scratch, puncture your photographs. It probably isn’t the best idea to store grandpas’ photo collection in his toolbox.
Air Pollutants: Now this might sound like overkill but even your basic house cleaning products and fresh paint can have harmful effects on your photographs. A simple rule of thumb: if you think it would hurt you, it will probably hurt your photographs. No need to go overboard, just don’t leave your photos exposed to potent air pollutants that you think would make you dizzy if you sniffed them a bit too long.

Adhesives: Most of us are guilty for this one. As easy as they are to use those sticky strips and other tapes and adhesives often include chemicals that will slowly deteriorate the quality of your images. As above, if you are going to display your photographs keep copies and display them smartly, free from uv light and chemicals.

Summary
The sad truth is that no photograph will last forever. However, the good news is that by taking some simple and sound steps in storing and displaying your photographs you can greatly extend the lifespan of each of these moments for future generations. If you have already recognized some fungus, fading in color or any other damage it’s best to take action now and create digital copies of your images. Remember, once these damages appear they only get worse with time.

A Day in the Life of a Professional Genealogist

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https://www.progenealogists.com/

I recently had an extraordinary opportunity to be invited for a visit to the downtown Salt Lake City, Utah main office of the AncestryProGenealogists and because of this unusual visit, I decided to write about a day in the life of a professional genealogist.

I was somewhat surprised when I entered AncestryProGenealogists office. It was much larger and there were many more people working than I expected. The office was open and laid out with cubicles for each worker. This is a common work model in today's world but different than the one I worked in most of my life.

I was able to meet with several of the genealogists and other professionals on an informal basis and this gave me a good insight into the operation of the office. As I spoke with each of the professionals, I began to realize that the organization and workflow of the AncestryProGenealogists' organization was very familiar to me because it is very similar to the organization of a large professional law firm. I never thought that genealogists and attorneys had much in common, but this visit showed how similar they really are. Both attorneys and the AncestryProGenealogists work on projects (or cases) for an hourly rate and are organized into teams. In the case of the genealogists, the teams are organized either by the type of research or by geographic area. In law, the law firms are usually divided by the type of law that each section of the law firm is involved in pursuing. In this case, form follows function and both organizations have entry-level positions and a hierarchy based primarily on expertise and years of service.

I will come back to my newly discovered similarities between law and genealogy after explaining more about the day to day business of the genealogists. First of all, it is important to recognize the fact that most genealogists are essentially solo practitioners. That is, genealogy is a pursuit primarily by individuals working on their own.

If you have thought about becoming a professional genealogist and going to work for an organization such as AncestryProGenealogists, it would be important to realize that the organization has high expectations of professionalism. This transfers into a substantial background in research and in the use of genealogical records. In addition, not only would a prospective genealogical employee need to be proficient in genealogy they would also, of necessity, need to learn the business procedures of the organization.

During most of my years of law practice, I either worked by myself or in a very small law firm with one or two other partners. After many years of working, I transitioned to a medium-sized law firm with 20 to 25 attorneys. However, the law firm I worked for had a support staff that increased the total number of employees to almost 100. The law firm was large enough that I never did get to know all the people who worked there. There would be a similar experience in moving from working as a single person and moving into a highly organized and structured environment such as the one I observed at AncestryProGenealogists. I would suggest that you carefully consider your personal goals, work style, and other aspirations before considering working for such an organization.

In keeping with the developments of technology, not all of the employees work at the main office in Salt Lake City, Utah. They have a number of employees scattered across the United States and Europe who work either from Ancestry offices or from their homes. They also hire consultants for special projects.

New employees are interviewed both for their competency in genealogical research and for their ability to conform to the professional standards and organization of the company. Here again, this is no different than working for a large law firm.

New clients for AncestryProGenealogists primarily come from the extensive advertising and promotional efforts of the parent corporation. With the constant flow of clients, the company can provide a standardized approach to each client's particular research needs. After the client's research objectives are determined, the project is assigned to a research team composed of individual genealogical researchers and a research manager. Relationships with the clients are exclusively handled by personal Client Relationship Managers and all communication between the client and the researchers, i.e. genealogists is handled by these Client Relationship Managers who are trained specialists in handling the needs of the clients. This specialization frees up the genealogists to do their work of researching the particular client's goals.

Assuming that you decided that you wanted to work for AncestryProGenealogists and you saw that there was an opening, usually advertised on the Ancestry.com website, you would fill out an application, and, after a review of the application if the company was interested they would ask you to come for an interview. Some of these interviews are conducted by video online when the prospective employee lives some distance from Salt Lake City, Utah. If the company wished to extend an offer of employment and you accepted, you would begin work either in your location or in Salt Lake City, Utah.

Additionally, new employees are trained for a period of weeks on company procedures before they actually begin working on genealogical research. Obviously, a big company like AncestryProGenealogists also has many specialized employees for different job descriptions from computer support to customer support so not all their employees do genealogical research.

As a new employee, you would be assigned a mentor to assist you during the first few months of your training. Going back to the analogy I made between law firms and the organization of AncestryProGenealogists, in both cases, associates are given a period of time to "work their way up the ladder. " In a law firm, a new employee may work for a year or two as an associate before becoming a senior associate, then may eventually qualify as junior partners and eventually become senior partners. Of course, each increase in responsibility also has an increase in compensation. Likewise, in AncestryProGenealogists, Associates may spend some time before becoming official "genealogists." In both cases, there are senior partners or managers and ultimately all of the office functions are handled by the "boss" who is either the most senior partner or as may be the case for AncestryProGenealogists, a person hired for that specific position.

Working for AncestryProGenealogists means you're working for a salary, with benefits, and with the regularity of a daily work schedule. You would be working on specific client projects and would be doing research and recording your findings according to the specific forms and requirements of the company. Those who work for AncestryProGenealogists have a benefits package that is similar to other professional businesses. Although I did not get into the subject of the amount of compensation received, I was assured that it was sufficient for supporting a family.

Because I know some of the genealogists who work at AncestryProGenealogists, I am certain that the company has a level of competency. Although it was not discussed, there is likely a certain degree of pressure to complete projects in a timely fashion. Again, this is no different than working in a law firm where you are constantly under pressure either due to court proceedings or client deadlines.

Although for most of my legal career I did not view myself as ever working in a larger law firm, once I was hired, I found that the benefits from the organization and the ability to share information and be taught by those around me were a more positive experience than my time working on my own. It was also nice to have a regular income. Some of the AncestryProGenealogists employees expressed the same opinion.

I also concluded that the fee structure and billing procedures of the company were similar to those of large law firms. When you employ this degree of professionalism, you can expect to pay a professional level fee.

As I mentioned, some of the employees are involved in areas such as employee benefits that have little to do with genealogical research. One bonus for working with AncestryProGenealogists is that you could have the possibility of doing TV show research or managing ancestral tours in different parts of the world. One specialty also focuses on unknown parentage research. Some of the employees are also involved in employee and public education. I understand that they may have hired some Ph.D.'s in history recently.

All in all, if you were seriously considering becoming a professional genealogist and had acquired sufficient skills to be considered as an employee of AncestryProGenealogists, I would certainly recommend that you investigate that possibility.

As a sole practitioner lawyer, I got a lot out of the experience and "street smarts." When I joined a larger law firm, some of that experience was invaluable but I had to "unlearn" quite a few things and after spending time with the AncestryProGenealogists, I can say that going to work for that company would be a similar experience.

What is happening today with speech recognition?

Over the past few years, speech recognition software has moved from obscurity to the main stage. We are almost saturated with automatic answering software when we call larger businesses and speech recognition on smartphones has also become ubiquitous. But is this a serious advance or merely a novelty? Can you use speech recognition to do real work or only for casual and somewhat quirky communication?

I have been assessing the capabilities of speech recognition for many years and have been writing about my experiences off and on during that time period. Maybe a little history might help in giving some perspective.

Speech recognition has been under development for many years. You might recall HAL 9000 the computer in the 1968 film 2001, A Space Odyssey. Here we are about forty years later and a long time past 2001 and the capabilities of the HAL 9000 still seem like science fiction. Development of speech recognition software began long before 1968. The first speech recognition software/hardware combination was developed by Bell Laboratories in 1952 and could recognize numbers (digits) spoken by one voice. In 1962, ten years later, IBM demonstrated its Shoebox machine at the Worlds Fair in Seattle. I saw that demonstration and this jump started my interest in speech recognition software. The Shoebox system recognized 16 spoken words and the digits 0 through 9.

By the 1970s, speech recognition had advanced with the Department of Defense's DARPA Speech Understanding Research from 1971 to 1976. The program's system was called "Harpy" and could understand about 1011 words. Progress in speech recognition was incremental. I was aware of Apple's limited integration of speech recognition in 1993 and about that time in 1990 Dragon Dictate was launched by Dragon. My introduction to this product probably occurred with Dragon Dictate for Mac. The implementation of editing commands changed the products from limited use novelties into useful product.

However, my full use of speech recognition developed slowly over time. By the way, see if you can tell when I switched from manual typing to speech recognition in this post. However, in October of 2018, Nuance, the present developer of Dragon Naturally Speaking software announced that it was discontinuing support of Apple products.

The key factor in using speech recognition for day to day document production is the software's ability to edit. Even the most advanced software I have ever used is still cranky. Smartphone-based systems are little more than toys. Using voice to write text messages is always a source of amusement. Good voice recognition requires a very quiet environment and a speech pattern that clearly articulates each word. Granted, the entire idea of using speech recognition has moved to the mainstream of our computer usage but the advances in technology are still only partially implemented. The discontinuance of Dragon Dictate for the Mac is a serious setback.

Both Microsoft and Apple have speech recognition software as part of their operating systems. Each time there is a system upgrade I try to use the latest speech recognition software from Apple and from Microsoft and still find them both virtually lacking in editing ability. For the time being, I will continue to use Dragon Dictate until it becomes inoperable because of operating system changes. Hopefully, during the time while the program still operates other systems will be developed for Apple will improve its basic speech recognition program to implement adequate editing tools.

If you are using a Windows operating system, the best program is still Dragon NaturallySpeaking. Unfortunately, some new speech recognition programs are being implemented as subscription services with payment by the word or for time spent in dictation. Right now, it looks like Google Voice Typing is a good alternative with the limitation that it only works with Google Docs and the Chrome browser. 

I will keep looking.