Another Great Partnership!

Press Release from FamilySearch.com

DC Thomson Family History and FamilySearch.org to Make Billions of Records Available for People to Search

October 16, 2013

DC Thomson Family History and FamilySearch.org to make billions of records available for people to search

More than 13 million records launched today on findmypast.com

LONDON, England and SALT LAKE CITY, Utah--Annelies van den Belt, the new CEO of DC Thomson Family History, the British-based leader in online family history and owner of findmypast and Genes Reunited, has announced a major new partnership with US-based FamilySearch.org that will give family history enthusiasts access to billions of records online and new technology to collaboratively research their family roots. 

DC Thomson Family History, formerly known as brightsolid online publishing, is collaborating with FamilySearch, which has the largest collections of genealogical and historical records in the world, to deliver a wide range of projects including digital preservation, records search, technological development and the means to allow family historians to share their discoveries. 

More than 13 million records from FamilySearch.org launched today on findmypast.com, including major collections of births, marriages and deaths covering America, Australia, and Ireland. Around 600 additional collections, containing millions of records, will follow. 

The two organisations have a long history of working together on historical projects, including indexing 132 million records of the 1940 US census and two hundred years of British Army Service Records (Chelsea Pensioners) in a joint digitisation project with The National Archives. 

Van den Belt said: “This is fantastic news for our customers all over the world. As a leader in online family history we will be able to offer access to a much wider variety of records dating back hundreds of years and the first batch are ready to search on findmypast. The convenience of searching many treasures from FamilySearch.org along with our own extensive collections will provide rich new insights for our customers. 

“This partnership with FamilySearch will accelerate the momentum of our next phase of global growth into new non-English-speaking markets and give more people more access to more records to uncover their family history. This really cements our position as a market leader.” 

“We are excited to work with DC Thompson Family History on a vision we both share,” said Dennis Brimhall, CEO of FamilySearch. “Expanding online access to historical records through this type of collaboration can help millions more people discover and share their family’s history.” 

DC Thomson Family History is the British-based leader in online family history, which operates major online sites including findmypast, Genes Reunited and the British Newspaper Archive. It launched in America last year with its findmypast brand.

DC Thomson Family History has a strong record of partnerships with non-profit and public sector organisations such as the British Library and The National Archives among many other major archives and organisations around the world.

Notes to Editors

About DC Thomson Family History 

DC Thomson Family History, is a British-owned world leader in online genealogy, with a record of online innovation in the field of family history.

• It boasts 18 million registered users across its family of online genealogy brands
• It hosts over a billion genealogical records across its family of brands including Genes Reunited and findmypast

DC Thomson Family History helps partners to digitise their precious collections, providing them with an archival quality digital surrogate of their records, or publishing existing indexes and transcriptions. 

Several successful partnerships with DC Thomson Family History include (but are not limited to):

1911census.co.uk with The National Archives; comprising 36 million records, this is one of the largest online family history projects undertaken by The National Archives and a commercial partner.

ScotlandsPeople.gov.uk is a pay-as-you-go e-commerce site operated by brightsolid as a partnership between the National Records of Scotland (NRS) and the Court of the Lord Lyon. The site allows searches of 50 million names, has more than 30 million images and over one million registered customers.

The British Newspaper Archive (BNA) is a 10-year partnership project between the British Library and DC Thomson Family History. The content for the website comes from the newspaper collection at Colindale Library, and the plan is to have 40 million, fully-searchable pages on the website by 2021, with at least 8,000 pages being added to the site every day.

About FamilySearch

FamilySearch International (online at FamilySearch.org) is the largest genealogy organization in the world. Millions of people use FamilySearch records, resources, and services to learn more about their family history. To help in this great pursuit, FamilySearch has been actively gathering, preserving, and sharing genealogical records worldwide for over 100 years. FamilySearch is a nonprofit organization sponsored by The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints. Patrons may access FamilySearch services and resources free online at FamilySearch.org or through over 4,800 family history centers in 70 countries, including the renowned Family History Library in Salt Lake City, Utah.

Media Contacts

Paul Nauta, FamilySearch PR Manager Phone: US +1-801-240-6498 Email: nautapg@familysearch.org 

Carolynne Bull-Edwards, Head of ContentPhone: UK +44 7932723866Email: cbull-edwards@brightsolid.com

Click to read related Frequently Asked Questions.

My Heritage and FamilySearch Enter into Strategic Partnership

TEL AVIV, Israel & SALT LAKE CITY, Utah--(BUSINESS WIRE)--MyHeritage, the popular online family history network, and FamilySearch.org announced today the signing and commencement of a strategic partnership that forges a new path for the family history industry. Under this multi-year partnership, MyHeritage will provide FamilySearch with access to its powerful technologies and FamilySearch will share billions of global historical records and family tree profiles spanning hundreds of years with MyHeritage. This will help millions of MyHeritage and FamilySearch users discover even more about their family history.

“For more than a hundred years, FamilySearch has been dedicated to working with the world’s archives to preserve their records for future generations”

FamilySearch will provide MyHeritage with more than 2 billion records from its global historic record collections and its online Family Tree. These records will be added to SuperSearch, MyHeritage’s search engine for historical records, and will be matched with family trees on MyHeritage using its matching technologies. MyHeritage users will gain access to an unprecedented boost of historical records and family tree profiles, which are key to researching and reconstructing their family histories. This reinforces MyHeritage's position as an international market leader, with gigantic assets of family trees and records, which are the most globally diverse in the industry.

FamilySearch members will benefit from MyHeritage's unique technologies which automate family history discoveries. Smart Matching™ automatically finds connections between user-contributed family trees and Record Matching automatically locates historical records relevant to any person in the family tree. By receiving accurate matches between FamilySearch’s Family Tree profiles and historical record collections, such as birth, death, census, and immigration documents, FamilySearch members will be able to more effectively grow their family trees in size and in depth and add conclusions supported by historical records.

“For more than a hundred years, FamilySearch has been dedicated to working with the world’s archives to preserve their records for future generations” said Gilad Japhet, Founder and CEO of MyHeritage. “Their massive undertaking has made family history more accessible to everyone. This partnership highlights MyHeritage’s technology leadership and our firm commitment to adding historical records on a massive global scale, accelerating our vision of helping families everywhere explore and share their legacy online. We look forward to a fruitful future working hand in hand with our friends at FamilySearch.”

“FamilySearch values collaborative partnerships that enable more people, in more places, to discover their family history” said Dennis Brimhall, CEO of FamilySearch. “MyHeritage is an innovative company that has a fast growing, global online audience. We are excited to commence this partnership which enables FamilySearch to better serve the global family history community.”

Do You Have Pioneers in Your Attic?

Mountain West Digital Library, used with permission

Do you have Pioneers in Your Attic?

Do you have original documents relating to the overland migration period 1842-1865? 

There is a free scanning event happening at the Pleasant Grove Library (Utah) on September 14, 2013. Attached is a flyer about the event.  This event is FREE and the scanning will be done on site. You will keep your materials and a digital copy will be sent to you. 

This is just one of may of these events scheduled around the state. For more information, click here. 

Click here to see additional scanning dates and locations.

This event is sponsored by the Utah Academic Library Consortium and Mountain West Digital Library in partnership with local libraries and museums. 

Ancestry.com and FamilySearch Join Forces Again!

 © 2013 Eva Ekeblad 
( used under CCBY-NC-SA 2.0)

Ancestry.com has announced a long-term partnership with FamilySearch. It is anticipated that one billion international genealogical records will be digitized in the next five years. Read the rest of the article here to gain a perspective of what this truly means for the genealogical community at large!

The Federation of Eastern European Family History Societies (FEEFHS)

A couple of weeks ago I was fortunate enough to attend the annual workshop presented by The Federation of Eastern European Family History Societies (FEEFHS). It was the first workshop that I have attended specifically tailored to my area of interest. All I can say is "why did I wait so long?" This workshop was amazing and for the first time in my life, I was surrounded by enthusiastic genealogy buffs who had surnames as weird as mine! That in itself was a revelation! The workshop had classes in the morning and then we were free to research at the Family History Library until we were kicked out when they closed! As part of the workshop, each participant met with a consultant who could help them search their particular country of interest. I was so excited to have a consultant who used to live in Lithuania, understood my challenges AND happened to live in the same town as me! The same town thing was a huge bonus! I now have two Lithuanians (there may be more, I don't know about) living in my town who can help me with translation whenever I happen to find something that won't translate in Google Translate!

Since Lithuania and much of Europe's boundaries have changed over and over during the last century, we had some great history lessons. It was amazing to watch as countries changed, dissolved, renamed themselves something else, got conquered, etc. I quickly learned that the way to work on genealogy in eastern Europe is to know the history. I also learned that real estate and eastern European history have something in common... "Location, Location, Location! For real estate you want to buy in a good location. For eastern European genealogy, you have to know the location of your ancestors. Unfortunately, I only have Lithuania listed on records that I have found. So, I need to search deeper and cover everyone associated with the family. Sooner or later, someone is bound to list where they are from on a record (at least that is the hope!).

I also learned that I need to learn a little Russian, at least enough to recognize main record titles. There are some great Russian language tutorials on line at FamilySearch.org. You can also Google Russian language, Russian alphabet, Russian genealogy, etc. You get the idea.

All in all, I had a blast at this workshop and am already planning for next year! Hopefully, I will be able to impress Professor Thom Edlund with my Russian skills! Actually, he is the master so I probably won't impress, but I can at least make a brave attempt at it this year!

Digital Preservation, Part 3

Here is the final part of Gary Wright's digital preservation series.  It is a great wrap up! I figure if I am going to put so much effort into my research that I had better put that much effort into preserving it! Otherwise, I'm afraid that all of my effort will end up in the local landfill! A sad thought indeed!

Enhancements to FamilySearch.org

Woman (public domain photo) 

If you still haven't been bitten by the family history bug, maybe now is the time to wade into the waters! There is a great article about the latest enhancements on FamilySearch.org. The eventual goal is one gigantic tree of the whole human family. Definitely a worthy goal in my mind! Check out the article here. Who knows? You may even find that you are related to the woman above!

Digitally Preserving Your "Stuff, Part 2

Last week I wrote about preserving your information digitally. Well, actually, I pointed you to a really great article written by someone else with a whole lot more knowledge and authority than me. If you liked Part 1, you need to now catch Part 2. Thanks to Gary Wright for these two articles! Gives me lots to think about!

Do you have books like these?

http://pixabay.com/en/books-old-reading-antique-69469/ (public domain)

You may want to run them through this!

http://pixabay.com/en/computer-scanner-hardware-flatbed-30383/ (public domain)

There are many ways to digitize your important items. Check out local libraries, universities, and local genealogy societies. You should be able to get some direction from those sources.

Happy 24th of July Everyone!

The 24th of July isn't a recognized holiday except in Utah. This is the day we honor our pioneer ancestors who crossed the plains so that we, as a people, could practice our religion in peace. Kind of like what the Pilgrims did when they left England so that they could worship how they wished. Anyway, I was reading the FamilySearch blog today and the latest post talks about preserving your records digitally. I was intrigued because I think a lot about this AND I wish that I had records from my ancestors that I could look at, read, and glimpse into their lives. I want my records to live beyond me! I may not have a glamorous life, but I do have a great life!

If you want some really great advice on how to preserve your records so that they may outlive you, you need to read this post! Hopefully, it will be a jumping off point to get you started!

Happy 24th of July!

FamilySearch Certified Programs

This information is from FamilySearch.org.

We may mourn PAF, but there are other programs available including Ancestral Quest, which is the natural extension to PAF. In Ancestral Quest, you can use either a PAF database or an Ancestral Quest database!

Partner News-July 2013

July 18, 2013 By Gordon Clarke

FamilySearch is pleased to announce the first four Tree Share certified applications that are PAF compatible: Ancestral Quest, Celebrating Family History and Me, Legacy Family Tree, and RootsMagic . RootsMagic is the first Tree Share Plus certified application. TenGenChart is now Tree Access certified. “Certified” means the product is compatible with FamilySearch.org and has features that conform to our strict standards of quality.

or Tree Access (tree read only) indicates that FamilySearch Family Tree data can be read from the partner’s application.
or Tree Connect (tree read and writing of sources) indicates that you can attach references about your ancestors to records, images, stories, and other media found on the internet. These attached sources of evidence can be viewed by anyone using FamilySearch Family Tree.
or Tree Share (full tree read and write) indicates that the partner’s product can reconcile tree data with FamilySearch.

or Tree Share Plus has the features of Tree Share and FamilySearch collaborative features including Discussions, Sources, and Change History.

Ancestral Quest and Ancestral Quest Basic are now Tree Share certified. Ancestral Quest is the easy-to-use, full-featured family tree program that received the “Most Comprehensive Syncing” award from FamilySearch. The Windows versions of PAF were created from an earlier version of Ancestral Quest, so PAF users will feel right at home using the screens, reports, and other functions. Ancestral QuestQ includes scores of new features not found in PAF, such as its Ordinance Reservation and Tracking System, which helps users keep their personal data in sync with temple records. Whether you are a PAF user looking for an upgrade, or a new user getting started, Ancestral Quest is the ideal program to help you organize your family tree.

Celebrating My Family Tree and Me is Tree Share  certified. Celebrating My Family Tree and Me offers elegant reports, charts, calendars, and customized printing; and unlimited storage of photos, sound clips, video clips, and other precious documents; generation of research books, slide shows, and scrapbooks. It provides simple notes and source citation entry and private online collaboration of group projects; and it imports data seamlessly from PAF and other genealogy programs.

Legacy Family Tree is now Tree Share  certified application.  Legacy Family Tree is the FREE genealogy software to organize, research, and publish your family’s tree. Use Legacy to print maps, get research suggestions, collaborate with other family members, cite your sources, publish books and shareable CDs, and do much more. Legacy makes it easy to work with FamilySearch and will measure your progress against the goals you set for temple work. Easily import from PAF and other programs. Get started today by downloading Legacy for free.

RootsMagic and RootsMagic Essentials are the first Tree Share  certified applications.  Winner of the FamilySearch award for “Easiest to Sync,” RootsMagic 6 genealogy software makes working with new FamilySearch a breeze, including reserving ordinances and creating temple trips. Import directly from PAF, new FamilySearch.org, and other programs. Take advantage of other features, such as running RootsMagic directly from a USB drive, SourceWizard, integrated web search, creating Shareable CDs, and much more. Whether you’re a beginner or an experienced genealogist, RootsMagic makes family history easy.

TenGenChart  is now Tree Access certified.  With one click, FamilySearch users are able to create circular 10 generation pedigree charts for themselves or family members. The site also permits users to upload GEDCOM 5 files to seed the chart. Easy to use, TenGenChart is always free and creates huge 4 6x 36-inch charts.

See these new products and previously certified products at www.FamilySearch.org/products

 The diamond mark indicates products that were previously certified for new.familysearch.org.

 The check mark indicates products that are now certified for FamilySearch.org Family Tree.