Although I suffered the entire day with a headache of epic proportions, the First Annual FamilySearch Blogger’s Day at the Joseph Smith Memorial Building in Salt Lake city, was one of the “Red Letter Days” of 2010. During the day, which consisted of 13 well-developed sessions by what they like to call their “A Team,” FamilySearch managers gave us an inside look at what’s up with FamilySearch – what they’ve done, and much of what’s planned for the future.
After introductions, in which I was introduced as the “ultimate survivor, most voted off the Island, but still in residence,” (ain’t that the truth?!), FamilySearch President Jay Verkler spoke at a short session entitled “Who is FamilySearch? How to Think About Us.” It was an enlightening and excellent start of an eventful day.
The following notes and thoughts are a combination of Mr. Verkler’s comments, as well as my own observations, and editorial commentary.
Jay started his talk by asking few questions, What is FamilySearch? Is it a Company? Is it a Library? Is it an Archive? Is it a Digitizer of records? Is it a Website? The answer 
was as expected… “All of the above.”
Back-up the Granite Mountain?
While running through the above litany of options, Jay happened to mention that FamilySearch is actively considering some kind of second storage area to act as a back-up to the granite mountain vault. Records by the million are being digitized, and it just seems prudent that some kind of redundancy should be achieved to insure the safekeeping of records that in some cases can’t be replaced – at any cost whatsoever. All this is just in the early stages of planning and no funding, sites, or anything of that nature have been dealt with… It’s interesting in that the first question asked of Jay at the end of his session was one dealing with this subject. We all wanted to know more. Mr. Verkler kinda’ backtracked a bit, considered he was speaking to a room full of bloggers and let us know that maybe he shouldn’t have mentioned the topic… However, in good humor he explained the redundency idea as best he could.It certainly made sense to me.
Build on Other’s Research – Don’t Just Repeat It.
The Genealogical Society of Utah (GSU) was formed in 1894. An integral part of the Church of Jesus Christ of Later-Day Saints, the Society has always been interested in records capture, as well as correlated research. Today this is more important than ever. If progress is to be made at the rate that it must be done to ultimately record the genealogy of all those who ever lived, genealogists have got to quit creating the wheel and doing the same research over and over again. It’s important that genealogists will be able to confidently build on the work of others, and not just repeat other’s research (and mistakes). FamilySearch is taking on this challenge, and they (unlike family trees found at Ancestry.com, et al.) will move ahead with one giant tree – a tree made up everybody… My thought is that the challenge is immense, for in order for the tree to work – it’s got to be sourced, and even sources can – and will – disagree. My friend, Billy Edgington, says that trying to get folks to cooperate may be like trying to herd cats.
History
As mentioned above, the Genealogical Society of Utah (GSU) was formed in 1894. The first computer was installed for genealogy at the GSU in 1969. In 1984, GEDCOM was developed by the GSU, and accepted by genealogical software developers as a standard, allowing the import and export of data from within popular genealogy software programs. I remember the early GEDCOM development days vividly. Programmers were invited to Salt Lake City where they met in sessions and were given GEDCOM standards. I also remember how some programs were developed that didn’t adhere to GEDCOM. I believe it was sometime in 1992 that I got a call from the marketing person for a new genealogy computer program called “Family Tree Maker.” She’d sent me a review copy of the program a couple weeks previously. She asked me what I thought of it. I replied that I thought the program made wonderful charts. I then asked her if she’d ever heard of something called GEDCOM? She asked me how to spell it… Family Tree Maker 2 included GEDCOM.
Community Collaboration
According to Jay, motivations for collaboration include the following:
- A strong and robust genealogical community, in all it’s dimensions, for-profit, non-profit, everyone…
- An enduring legacy, building upon previous efforts
- “When an individual’s heart is turned to their ancestors, the world is strengthened.”
RootsTech
The First Annual RootsTech Conference will take place in Salt Lake City (in the northern end of the Salt Palace to be exact) next February 10-12, 2011. The conference DOES NOT replace the National Genealogical Society’s “GenTech,” but does replace the Conference on Computerized Family History, the Technology Workshop and the FamilySearch Developers Conference. I’ll write more about RootsTech as time goes along, but it looks to be an exciting event, both for those on the “development” side of computer technology, as well as those on the “user” side of things. I expect the conference to be overwhelmingly successful, although there are no guarantees that it will be that the first year. In discussions with Jay Verkler, and Dick Eastman Thursday evening over dinner, we agreed that we really have to give it three years to get an idea of its eventual success.
First FamilySearch Library
The library in Riverton, Utah, about which I wrote last June, is an experiment – a library much larger than a typical family history center and one with more expertise available. The concept library has been successful, and other sites along the Wasatch front in Utah, and beyond have been identified to expand the program. The FamilySearch brand as such has also been a success, and the 501c3 Non-profit Corporation is even titled as FamilySearch. I think the idea of FamilySearch libraries is a winner. Libraries of this nature with more resources, longer hours, and librarians with more expertise will no doubt lead to more good genealogy data being found, compiled and added to that “big database” I wrote about in the lead paragraphs of this article. I like it, and am looking forward to its expansion.
The Mind is a Tricky Thing
Again, I want to say that the above items reflect both comments made during Mr. Verkler’s inspiring blogger-day session, as well as my own thoughts. I may have corrupted some of Jay’s comments in this blog, and for that I apologize and am entirely responsible. The mind and memory are tricky, so perfection isn’t often obtained. I don’t pretend to be any different.
Comments are welcomed…
