The Deeper Meaning of RootsTech -- Modern Luddites Revisited

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As defined by Wikipedia, "the Luddites were a social movement of British textile artisans in the nineteenth century who protested--often by destroying mechanized looms--against the changes produced by the Industrial Revolution, which they felt were leaving them without work and changing their entire way of life." By extrapolation, a "luddite" is anyone opposed to the advances of technology.

As genealogists we are current faced with tremendous technological changes. These changes also affect our daily lives outside of genealogy; how we eat, sleep, travel and what we do in our free time. Other changes have affected our work and like the Luddites, many of us are fearful that we will lose our jobs (if we haven't already lost our job).

In a sense, genealogy is part of a larger technological change affecting all activities that deal with the creation and dissemination of information. It is not that there are a few new gadgets around like iPhones and iPads, there is a deeply fundamental way in which information is handled and considered. Information itself has become a commodity to be bought and sold on the modern market place. It is no longer a byproduct of obscure academic activities, but is a huge and difficult giant looming over every human activity. Rightly, we have passed from the Industrial Revolution, to the Industrial Age, then to the Post-Industrial Age to the current information Age.

RootsTech, by its very name, underscores the impact technology is having on an otherwise conservative activity like genealogy. The incedents of change are everywhere apparent, from the pervasiveness of electronic devices to a shift in the way source documents are preserved and displayed, all aspects of genealogical research are undergoing radical shifts in their methodology and practice.

So, who are the current luddites? Why would anyone oppose the demonstrated advantages of online research, digital cameras, scanners, online databases and the other obvious effects of technological change?

Let me use a couple of examples of what I would consider to be modern luddites.

Last week I wrote a post about the demise of Personal Ancestral File (PAF). I was not particularly surprised to receive comments from readers who objected to my characterization of the program. In one case the commentator asked, "What is wrong with it if all you want is a holding program for your information." The answer is nothing is wrong with it. But in another comment, the commentator said, "I took a couple classes from the Salt Lake Community College on genealogy last semester and both of the teachers told us in the first lesson to go to FamilySearch.org and download PAF." If in 2001, I went to a local community college and took a course on word processing, do you think I would stay in the class if the instructor started by telling us to use MacWrite or WordStar as our primary program?

What I mean by saying there is nothing wrong with using PAF is that there are no software police out there making sure you use the latest and best possible program. I you choose to run Windows 95 on your Intel 80486 based computer, no one really cares. But don't expect to participate in most of the advances in information technology available over the Internet using your computer system. Additionally, on a program by program basis, it is very likely that few of the currently sold programs (except PAF) would run on that system. What is objectionable is when you (running that system) and especially others who should know better, actively promote using the older technology at the expense of having compatibility with newer operating systems. One hardware example, none of those older systems had USB connectors introduced in 1996 which are the basis of nearly all external devices available today.

One individual I talked to recently, related how he had been in a certain occupation all of his life and when the business decided that computers were necessary, he quit his job because he didn't want to learn about computers. The conversation took place in the context of genealogical research. Opposition to technological change can be as blatant as changing jobs to avoid computers or as subtle as recommending an out-of-date program for primary use.

What about using a program like PAF for "holding data." We still get people bringing in 5 1/4 inch floppy disks with old PAF data files. Fortunately, there are a few people that still have computers and drives that support that disk format and that can read the old PAF 2.3 files, but the possibility of transferring the data is fast disappearing. At the recent RootsTech conference representatives from FamilySearch emphasized that they were fully committed to an only browser based genealogy model and were not thinking of supporting PAF again at all.

Modern luddites may not be entirely anti-technology, they do not have to refuse to use telephones and TVs to be luddites, they can simply refuse to acknowledge when a technology has substantially changed and continue to cling to the older technology without any really valid reason for doing so. To repeat, what is even worse, is then they are in a position to make recommendations and they either intentionally or negligently espouse antiquated technology.

One last example involved a discussion by William Barrett, a professor and BYU about the need of genealogical societies to be in the 21st Century. Later in the day, I happened to overhear a conversation between a representative of a society and one of the Bloggers. The society member was bemoaning the fact that the members of her group were actively opposed to having webinars or being involved in any other online activities including probably a website. The conversation would probably have gone unnoticed had I not just heard Professor Barrett.

What is the solution? Education and patience.

New Developments at FamilySearch

As Yogi Berra once said, "You can observe a lot by watching." You can also learn a lot by listening carefully at the recently ended RootsTech Conference, both to what was said and what wasn't said. One of the big questions out there in the genealogical community is the future of the New.FamilySearch.org database. Representatives of FamilySearch made several references to the future of the program. From the questions answer at the Devotional which was conducted as a question and answer session, on the last day of the Conference, it appears that there are going to be major adjustments made to the program over the next year which will hopefully end up with New FamilySearch being made available to the general public.

I recall three areas of improvement to the program: movement towards an evidence based system by incorporating improved sourcing, adding the ability to edit the existing information, and addressing the issue of multiple copies of individuals by adding the ability to chose a specific ancestor and suppress incorrect lineages. All of these areas of improvement would be extensively welcomed in the genealogy community.

FamilySearch made a modest statement about the future of the FamilySearch.org website when it introduced the FamilyTech.FamilySearch.org portion of the site. The announcement went practically unnoticed by the Bloggers who were the only ones present when FamilySearch's representative mentioned the new site. But the site has now appeared in link on the bottom of a page on FamilySearch.org and is prominently featured in the FamilySearch Labs website. This new site is definitely evolving with several major changes, such as the name of the site, within the past few days.

In answer to a specific question about Personal Ancestral File (PAF), the FamilySearch representative affirmed that there would be no further development of the program. He also indicated that FamilySearch was committed to sticking with a browser based interface. Although the significance of this statement may have been lost on the vast majority of those in attendance, the significance is that PAF is definitely not web-based. So the answer essentially confirms the demise of PAF.

Another issue raised in the discussion was whether or not FamilySearch would be updating the GEDCOM standard, last updated in 1995. The surprising answer was that the present standard is being evaluated and that FamilySearch would be moving ahead to update the standard. There has been almost nothing said about updating the standard for many years by FamilySearch, but there is a private movement to do just that called the Build a Better GEDCOM.

One representative also indicated that there was an effort going forward to make more digitized family and local history books available at a greater rate than is presently occurring. It appears that there is no link on the updated FamilySearch.org website to the so-called Family History Archives on the BYU University website. The Family History Archives site appears to have been abandoned since the item counter hasn't been updated for many months. I do know that scanning is going forward, at least at the level of the Family History Centers because volunteers at the Mesa Regional Family History Center continue to scan books. But I also know that the scans are not being put online because I had a book scanned almost a year ago and it has still not been made available online. Other FamilySearch representatives  indicated that there definitely was a problem in getting all this information online, but that the situation should clear up and images be available online.

Among other projects shown at the Convention was a test program to use individual flatbed scanners to provide images into the pipeline for use in the Historical Records Collections or in separately available online repositories.

There seems to be a lot going on and it takes some work and talking to different people you can get sort-of a fragmented view. So hopefully I am not too far off with some of these projects and projections.

Print on Demand -- Brewster Kahle at RootsTech

Of all the amazing things at RootsTech, one of the most amazing was the one hour presentation by Brewster Kahle, founder of the Internet Archive and one of the most amazing things about the Internet Archive is the Internet Archive Bookmobile. To quote from the website, "In a celebration of the Public Domain, the Internet Archive's Bookmobile will be coming to a town near you, bringing with it the ability to access, download, and print one of the almost 20,000 public domain books currently available online."

In his presentation, Brewster recounted the impact of freely accessible books in the poorer nations of the world, with the project currently in countries like Egypt and India. Again quoting from the website:

Why a Bookmobile? Just like the bookmobiles of the past brought wonderful books to people in towns across America, this century's bookmobile will bring an entire digital library to their grandchildren. The Internet Archive's mission is to provide universal access to human knowledge, and given the advancement of digital storage and communications this goal is now achievable. Part of accomplishing that goal is to make sure that public domain books are available digitally. Another part is making sure people across the country have access to those works whether by reading on a screen, or more likely, to be printed back out again as a book.

So what is the Bookmobile? It is a mobile digital library capable of downloading public domain books from the Internet via satellite and printing them anytime, anywhere, for anyone. It will be traveling across the country from San Francisco to Washington D.C., stopping at schools, libraries and retirement homes; places where people understand the value of a book. After the bookmobile leaves, each library will understand what it would take to make print and bind public domain books for their patrons.

Now what does this have to do with genealogy? The Internet Archive helped supply the equipment and the software for the BYU Family History Archive project that is currently digitizing thousands of family histories and genealogy related books. There is a distinct possibility that print on demand, like that done by the Bookmobile may be one way to save the libraries. I mentioned the Open Library project previously, the Bookmobile is part of all of these projects.

RootsTech opened up a whole new world of how technology is affecting the acquisition, storage and retrieval of information in all forms.

RootsTech -- Where should we go from here?

With such a fabulous experience it may be hard to see where RootsTech could go in the future. But I will take a stab at some ideas. My first thought is that RootsTech could become the place to announce new products, new acquisitions, mergers, anything newsworthy. Think of the exposure to a new product at this venue. It could also serve as a way to broaden the interest in genealogy by tying in advertising to the existing out sources. For example, what if there had been short ads for RootsTech on the Who Do You Think You Are? shows? How about some vendor cooperative advertising? What if RootsMagic (only an example) had a tag line for RootsTech on some of its media ads?

With a Conference that had so much content, it is hard to suggest anything, but what about having "tracks," that is a structured series of classes that the participants could do online or in the program that would guide them to which classes might be interesting for their level of interest and expertise.

It seemed to me that the hands-on classes were the most attended since there were some where I couldn't get a seat. How about running those classes as scheduled repeats and ask people to specifically sign up for a time?

I really liked the idea of having an interview booth at the show with the video of the interview. It might be helpful for the vendors and other speakers who would make themselves available for interviews to be put on a list and given to the Bloggers in advance so we could do some research on the companies and decided if we wanted to do an interview. If this was done this year, I somehow missed it.

One of things that was interesting was the fact that FamilySearch invited a few non-genealogy Bloggers. It was nice to share a different perspective with people who wrote about other subjects rather than genealogy all the time. This might be expanded to some technology Bloggers or other categories.

I might come up some more ideas later. I think this Blogger needs to slow down for a while.

RootsTech -- Devotional with Elder Richard G. Scott

Preliminary note: I am taking these notes real time at the sessions so please excuse typos and fragmented sentences.

FamilySearch is a wholly owned corporation, owned by The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints (the Church). As part of the RootsTech Conference there was a devotional. Perhaps for some in attendance this was their first look at an LDS meeting. This was a reminder of the spiritual focus of genealogy emphasized by the teachings of the LDS Prophets. Some of this post will have a very LDS orientation.

With Elder Scott, on a panel, was David Rencher, Craig Miller, Ransom Love, Jim Greene all from FamilySearch. Introductions and opening was by CEO Jay Verkler.

This was totally a Church experience. For the most part, although the Church was like the elephant in the middle of the room, RootsTech is a genealogical and technological experience and the Church has truly remained in the background. One thing that happens in this Conference is the attendance of hundreds of Church missionaries who are all so visible because of their little black and white missionary badges. Of course, they also have suits and ties, contrary to the rest of us.

This was mostly a question and answer session. The questions began with issues relating to Church Temple and ordinance work.

Question: What will happen to Family History Centers outside the Wasatch Front? Answered by Jay Verkler, the uses of Family History Centers may disappear, but they will always need and provide help, experience and guidance. They are currently testing a model of centralized Family History Libraries like the facility in Riverton.

Question: Explain the new Ancestry.com deal? All Family History Centers will eventually be at a level of access to Ancestry.com where services are economical and feasible. The next few months is a test phase for implementation. The Centers will have the standard Library Edition of Ancestry.com.

Question: What is the balance between involving everyone and being genealogically sound? David Rencher. FamilySearch is trying to change the entire way that people in the Church do family history. They are not going in the direction of the academic genealogists.

Question: Problems in library in Alexandria, Egypt? The library facilities around the world are being expanded. There will be a significant library in conjunction with the Temple in Rome, Italy. The microfilm at the Alexandria library may be impacted but we have to wait.

Question: What about duplication? There is a fundamental shift in the way duplicates are detected in the new system on New FamilySearch. Do just a little more before doing the ordinance work, but don't require extensive documentation.

Question: Is Personal Ancestral File going to talk to New FamilySearch? FamilySearch is using a web interface. The program is not being supported. Many vendors offer free versions of their programs to work with New FamilySearch. FamilySeach will stick with a browser based interface. Will be adding better sourcing, with an evidence basis. Another feature change will be to edit the information to be able to correct or clean up information. They are fully aware of the multiple individual copy problem and are working to alleviate the problem. Other vendors are providing the services that FamilySearch may not be able to provide.

Question:  Is it OK to have a Millenium File? Yes.

Question: How can I inspire and motivate my Priesthood Leaders? Many of them need to be educated about the importance of the work. Pray for them but respect the keys and read the manuals.

Question: How do we get people to come to the classes? Read Section 121 of the Doctrine and Covenants. But have patience.

Question: GEDCOM standard issues? Standard is being evaluated and looked at. They are going to move ahead and update the standard.

Question: What about access to New FamilySearch to those who are not Church members? They are still planning on opening the program but are still working on the issues.

Question: How do we get Young Single Adults interested in family history? Design fun activities that involve family history. Go to their homes to help them with their family history.

Question: Will this meeting be online? Yes. Sometime in the future.

Question: How has the use of the Internet affected the storage of records in the Granite Mountain Vault? All of the records in the vault will eventually be digitized.

Question: Is there anyway we can have New FamilySearch without clicking on so many arrows? Use a third party program to have your file on the desktop. They will be having a new user interface for the pedigree portion of the program. SharingTime overlay.

Question: What new technology will have the most impact on family history in the near future? The power that comes from the Spirit of Elijah.

Question: What about documentation in New FamilySearch for place names at the historical time? Suggestion to have two fields one for current place and one for historical place. They are working on the problem of changing boundaries but do not have a suggested solution. Working on pushing the data creation at local level to get more collaboration. New FamilySearch is still a Beta program.

Question: What about on demand digitization of microfilm? FamilySearch is trying to get there as quickly as possible.

Question: Duplication of work on New FamilySearch? Project is going very well. They are working on fixing the problem of cleaning up the data. Will be able to select the correct lines.

My comment: Wow!!!

RootsTech -- Final Day

Chris van der Kuyl of BrightSolid introduced the Keynote Speaker Brewster Kahle. You may not know the name BrightSolid but you might know their online databases such as ScotlandsPeople and Findmypast. He announced an alliance with the British Library Newspaper Archives to start digitizing their holdings over the next ten years. This is a very important milestone. 

Brewster Kahle is the founder of the Internet Archive.  His presentation focused on migration and preservation. Getting Personal Archives online. He addressed the issues involved in preserving all of the personal material lying in people's homes; personal letters, movies, photos etc. It is now getting difficult to find ways to migrate VHS and other tape media. He talked about Gordon Bell, who put his whole life's communication online. 

Primary materials going online is another important topic. The Internet Archive is creating the free genealogy. They re-did the entire U.S. Census Records, 40,000,000 pages. Effort is to get all of this material up and out to the Internet. They contribute the hardware and software to the BYU scanning effort. The entire Library of Congress can fit on 26 Terabytes. The Internet Archive did a print on demand mobile book printing service. This is now spreading all over the world. They now have over 1 million digital books free to the print disabled.

Every child a laptop program. Internet Archive has made all of their books available to this program. They are also making their books available on tablet computers and helping giving access to the blind and other handicapped people. 

How do you do all this? They have built their own scanning equipment and hired unemployed single parents to man the project. Scanning center all over the world and starting a free lending program with about 10,000 books at Open Library. (openlibrary.org) The idea is that you can check out a digital copy of the book from the library as long as no one else is using the book.

Audio is not as much as books. There are about 2 to 3 million disks out there and they are digitizing all of the unclaimed items, such as the Grateful Dead concert recordings. 4000 fans with 80,000 concert recordings of artists who will allow this to happen. The Internet Archive provides free hosting for all items. 600,000 items in over 100 collections.

Moving images of out-of-copyright items. There is not that large of collection of movies, but they are also doing the old educational films. Now using films for new and different things. The best we have to offer is not yet on the Internet. They are putting all the whole spectrum of movies including TV shows. Recording ten channels of TV 24 hours a day for years to preserve. Now recording 50 channels of TV every day all day.

They are also preserving the old video game. They are also preserving all of the Internet in the WayBackMachine.  Average web page only lasts about 100 days before it is eliminated or changed. They are also emphasizing foreign sites.

Preservation. Write on something very durable and hide it. Their idea is to keep it in use and store it. The WayBackMachine is in one place in a storage container. They are now storing 3 Petabytes. Don't just have one copy. They make copies at the new library at Alexandria in Egypt. About 200TB. The idea of having all your information in one place is really worrisome. Can we learn the stories of our ancestors? Will our descendants know our story? Are we making a good enough record of who we are? Can our descendants learn our story?

My comment: I really like this. It is so wonderful.

RootsTech Report Card

RootsTech was a fantastic experience. OK, why then would I even consider writing about even the slightest negative issue? Because in another year, I hope to be sitting here again at the Second Annual RootsTech Conference and maybe, if I say something, one or two of the issues might be overcome. Unless I am kidding myself that anyone actually reads this stuff. Like they say, the pen is mightier than the sword. Whatever that means? By the way, my philosophy is that if your opponent has a sword you better hope you have one too.

There are several things that may need consideration to make the conference even better. I decided do a Report Card about several of the conference considerations from Poor to Excellent. Here are my suggestions, with comments:

Location Salt Lake City: Excellent. There really isn't any other place that such a conference could take place with the same access to important genealogical resources. From the Family History Library to FamilySearch itself, the resources are here and available. February can be a difficult month weatherwise, but the weather cooperated and the Conference took place to sunny skies and mild (for the middle of Winter) temperatures. Also, Salt Lake has a real downtown with things to see and do as compared to my own hometown of Phoenix/Mesa. There is absolutely nothing in Phoenix within walking distance of anything else. Transportation in Salt Lake is good, accommodations are excellent and it is the place to do genealogy.

Location the Salt Palace: Fair to poor. Too bad when Salt Lake is such a terrific place that they had to build such a poorly designed conference center. This Conference, as conferences go, was not particularly large. I cannot imagine how they hold a larger conference. The rooms themselves are OK, the usual conference hard chairs and etc. but moving from the rooms to the conference floor is impossible. The elevator system is totally inadequate especially for an older group of attendees. The stairs are monumental, meaning you have to climb like you are in the Washington Monument or Statue of Liberty. Enough about that, I suppose that will not change but it is a shame.

Conference floor: Vendors: Excellent. What a great opportunity to have so many actively participating vendors. Let's hope we have even more next year.

Facilities and Treatment of Bloggers: A new category; Fabulous. I cannot imagine more attentive and helpful service than that provided by the FamilySearch folks. They are wonderful. I cannot applaud them enough for their personal and caring effort to make this a great experience.

Access to Internet: Fair. The Salt Palace evidently only has WiFi in the rooms themselves. There was no WiFi on the Conference Floor but the Media Hub had high speed connections. It was a little bit of a challenge to figure out when you could connect and when connection wasn't available.

Class line up: Good to Excellent: Some of the presenters were outstanding. Others were merely informative. It appeared to me that the attendees were looking more for solutions to technological challenges and would have liked more "how to" kinds of classes with more specific solutions.

Food: Mostly good but poor idea. It looked like they didn't plan very well for the Night at the Planetarium. The place was swamped and the food was OK but there were no utensils i.e. no forks. It was messy and hard to eat in a venue with almost no chairs. Same with serving food at the Family History Library, not such a good idea. Rethink the food idea. The food at the sponsored luncheons was the usual convention fair, OK.

All in all this was an exceptional opportunity and a wonderful experience. THANKS to all who helped and participated. Let's  do it all over again next year. (Well, maybe you could wait a few days before thinking about that).