RootsTech Connect 2021 - Day 1 - Innovations

After all the waiting, class preparation, session development, meetings, and everything else over the last couple months we are finally ready to start RootsTech Connect 2021. This was an incredible undertaking by the RootsTech team to get everything set up in such a short time and to help all of us with deadlines and questions to get to a point where this conference is today. And after all the work, we were able to experience the opening of the Expo Hall tonight and get ready for the first set of talks. 

One of my favorite parts of RootsTech is talking to the innovators and exhibitors. This year there are 14 Innovators at RootsTech. Some of the innovators, such as Adobe and MyHeritage, are showing off their photo restoration and enhancement capabilities. Adobe has their Photoshop, Lightroom, and Spark software on display. While MyHeritage was showing off their colorization and photo enhancement tools that they introduced in 2020. MyHeritage has had over 30 million photos enhanced using these applications. Adobe and MyHeritage are on total opposite ends of the spectrum for photo restoration and enhancement. MyHeritage allows users to upload their photos to the website for free and does a quick enhancement with no user based controls. MyHeritage's products are impressive and easy to do. Adobe is a more complex process which may require the user to manipulate various controls to get a specific outcome. Of course the user has more control with the Adobe products. Also, Spark provides ways to share your family photos on the web or in social media.

Another area of RootsTech that I like is the Demo Theater. This is where sponsors and exhibitors talk about their new developments, helpful products, and many other topics.

For tonight, my favorite innovation is FamilySearch's demonstration of their computer assisted indexing which is designed to be able to read handwriting in multiple languages. I tried it out with a marriage record written in German. It was pretty good but still had some errors. Overall, I think it did well enough to get a good start on the translation considering the quality of the document it had to start with. You can see the demo of this technology in the RootsTech Sessions at Computer Assisted Indexing. Then you can go to the website and see how well it will transcribe your handwritten documents. Here is an example of what it did with my German marriage record. The colors indicate people, places, and events.

The program is capable of reading handwriting in a variety of languages including German, Cyrillic, Arabic, English, and many others. So this should help you with a variety of documents.

 
FamilySearch also provides a demonstration video that shows a more difficult example where the computer is able to recognize the handwriting and extract the information into a tree showing the relationships included in the document. You can view the video of this demonstration on their session page. I'm sorry about the poor quality screenshots but they are clipped from the YouTube video.

Previously, the team had been working on improving the computer's ability to recognize typed document. Many of those records are now available on FamilySearch. You can see an example of an indexed record here. This work was connected to the Zoning Project which I participated in several years ago. The Zoning Project identified parts of newspapers which included important genealogical information such as birth, death and marriages and marked them so the computer would be able to recognize individual pieces of information. I did a blog post on the Zoning Project back in 2017 which you can read here.

Why is this innovation important? Once the computer has sufficiently learned this process, it will be able to utilize cloud based processing to index more records in one day than a person could in their entire lifetime. Currently, there is a quality threshold that has to be met before these computer assisted indexing projects are sent to the FamilySearch collections. Here is an example of a Spanish language church record that the computer indexed. Soon, you will begin to notice more records being indexed by computer. You will be able to identify those records since they have a blue box stating that the record was indexed by a computer. These records also have the capability for the user to edit mistakes.

Not only will this increase the number of searchable records but it will also allow you to request computer assisted indexing on demand for unindexed records. That means that any unindexed images (80% of all images are currently unindexed) that you find can be indexed on demand. There will be a button on the screen that will index the record and provide the record for you to review and edit. Eventually, as images are acquired they will be indexed y computers and then put online within a short period of time.

Innovations such as these will greatly increase our capability to be successful in our research.

Giving Back to Your Community Through Family History

 As family historians, much of our work is to record the history of our families and try to tell the stories of our ancestors. Some of us have specialized in specific parts of our research such as DNA, photographs, or home histories. Through all of our research we have found new cousins who are thankful for the work that we have done recording these stories. But much of the information we use originates as a result of work by others. Those people, the ones who do indexing, record burial places, and provide access to the various records that we use, are the angels that we don't always recognize. There are many ways that we can give back to our community through participating in the preservation of information and making it available to others. I have participated in many of these projects and have created a few of my own over the years.

Some of the easiest projects to find are indexing or transcription of records. There are many indexing projects available online and with the isolation and closure of many repositories due to COVID-19, many more are making their records available to indexers. Here are just a few examples:

FamilySearch Indexing is the standard for indexing records. FamilySearch has a wide variety of records available for indexing in many different languages. They really need your help if you are able to read other languages. There are several interesting projects available which you can participate in. This year is the 100th anniversary of the ratification of the 19th Amendment which gave women the right to vote in the United States. As part of this centennial event, FamilySearch is providing more voting records that need indexing. Additionally, they have released a large number of city directories from around the US. Some of these city directories have up to 300 names per page. FamilySearch Indexing allows you to create groups where you can work with your genealogical society, church group, or any other organization to index records together. All of the records indexed on FamilySearch are freely available to researchers.

Zooniverse is a crowd sourcing platform where organizations and researchers can place their projects for citizen volunteers to participate in. There are a variety of projects posted there including some record indexing projects. One indexing project that they are hosting is the American World War I Burial Cards Project. This project helps to record the burial locations of over 78,000 American soldiers from WW I. The Every Name Counts Project is an attempt to record the names of the millions of people who were held prisoner or killed in the Nazi concentration camps during World War II. The ANZACS Project works to record the stories of the men and women from New Zealand who served during WW I. Another project, the Criminal Characters Project, tells the story of the English criminals who were sent to Australia as punishment.

This period of social distancing has also made archives rethink their operating plans. Many archives have allowed their staff to work from home digitizing documents and preparing them for online access. The National Archives and Records Administration (NARA) has a Citizen Archivist Project where the public can help transcribe some of the many records held by the archive.

The Library and Archives of Canada has a similar project where volunteers can help record information so other researchers can use that information to discover their ancestor's stories.

Many states have also provided projects for volunteers to help record information. The Ohio Memory Project has their Ohio Memory Transcriptions Project where volunteers can work on several projects including the Toledoans in WW II, the Warren G. Harding Collection, and the Ohio History Collection. Search for your state to see if they also have projects.

We all need time outside to get exercise and just relax. Many of us have participated in FindAGrave and BillionGraves projects over the years. Both of these have their own mobile apps: FindAGrave app, BillionGraves app. You can see which cemeteries in your area still need burials recorded and spend a few hours in the fresh air, getting some exercise, and helping others find information on their ancestors.

BYU Linking Labs also has a variety of projects. These projects are developed by students at BYU to test many of the most advanced technologies such as handwriting recognition software. Assisting with these projects not only helps index records but is also used to develop more accurate computer algorithms. A list of their projects can be found on their Projects Page. Their African-American Families and Customized Geo Hints Projects allow you to search in a specific area or surname and attach records to their families in FamilySearch. The Automated Indexing Project uses a computer algorithm to select similar information such as surnames or cause of death. This is an easy way to index records by selecting choices that match the record you see on the screen and letting the computer program know if any of the words are not correctly matched.

There are also projects that individuals are working on to make more records available. The Family Bible Preservation Project is one such project. This project has over 5,000 pages, many of them from family bibles, which have been digitized and saved to FamilySearch Memories. Volunteers can select pages and attach them to the people on FamilySearch. Many of these family bibles have been separated from their families and found in various places such as online auctions, flea markets, antique shops, and yard sales. Without this project, many of these families would never know that there was a family bible with their ancestor's information.

You can even start your own projects. Over the years, I have purchased old photographs at antique sales and have attached them to their records in FamilySearch. Imagine doing your research and finding a picture of your great-great grandmother already attached to her profile. My current project is reading the stories in my hometown newspaper and connecting them to people from the community. My current focus is connecting stories about individuals during WW II. Some of these stories are about furlough visits, their letters, injuries, or missing or killed in action.

All of these activities are available for volunteers to participate in to make more records available to researchers. I don't always have time to contribute to these projects but last month I was able to index over 1,000 records for FamilySearch. Even if you only have a few minutes to participate in these projects, the records you contribute could be the one that someone has been looking for to break down their brick wall.

RootsTech 2019 - Tuesday - 26 February

Do you know what RootsTech is? Have you attended a RootsTech Conference in the past? RootsTech is the largest genealogy conference in the world, held in Salt Lake City, the mecca for genealogy. They are expecting over 14,000 people per day to attend. The conference runs for four days, from Wednesday, February 27 until Saturday, March 2 and today was the day of preparations for many of us.

View flying over the Rocky Mountains

So, what was today like? Well, for me it consisted of flying from Orlando to Salt Lake City. I left my home at 4am, boarded my flight in Orlando and spent the next 4 1/2 hours in the air. The flight was great, there was almost no turbulence, and we even arrived 25 minutes early.

Once I arrived, I boarded the UTA Trax which is a train line that runs throughout the city and to adjacent communities. This is one of the best metro lines I have used. It was less than a 10 minute ride from the airport right to my hotel.

After checking into the Plaza Hotel, I went across the road to the Salt Palace, where the conference will be held. They had early registration this year and it was seamless for me. I already had my name card which was sent to me earlier so all I had to do was pick up my bag, lanyard and speaker badge.

After registering, I decided to check out the room that I will be speaking at this year. My presentation is in room 155E at 3:00 on Saturday. That happens to be the last presentation session of the conference. I was surprised at the size of the rooms this year. They seem to be quite a bit larger than in previous years.

Room 155E where I will be speaking.

I walked around the Salt Palace for at least a half hour reacquainting myself with the layout and quickest route between classes. You need to know the layout so you can get to your preferred class. If you get lost you might miss out on that one class you really wanted to take.

One of the things many of us do at RootsTech is network. I had a meet-up planned for lunch for some of the members of the Second Life Genealogical Society. I am the current President of the organization and this is the only chance we get to bring us together and talk about our research. It was great getting back with some of them and meeting some for the first time in real life.

Julianne Trotter (FamilySearch) and me discussing indexing.

I also had an opportunity to meet up with Julianne Trotter from FamilySearch. She was one of the leads for the Zoning project that ran for awhile during 2017-2018. Zoning was a process where indexers selected newspaper articles related to birth, marriage and death events so they could be indexed later. We discussed where the project is now and also how to increase public interest in indexing more records. I mentioned one of the projects that I have been doing for several months which I call Genealogy on the Street. Each month I have been attending a local street market and setting up a genealogy booth where we do genealogy research for random people who come around. This has been a great success and has brought many new people into our Family History Center. I think we had a good discussion and it has made me think more seriously about some of the outreach plans I have been considering for the last couple years.

Now it is time to begin to relax, get things ready for tomorrow, and make sure I know which classes I want to attend. There will be a lot to do over the next couple days and I hope to be able to provide my readers with some insight on this conference and some helpful tips for their research.

A New Year - A New Commitment?

It's the start of another year and we all will be making our New Year's Resolutions at midnight tonight. But before I make new resolutions, I want to look back on those that I made at the beginning of 2018 and see how I did. In 2018, I resolved to do a better job blogging. Well, I managed to write 13 posts last year - equal to what I wrote in 2017. Another resolution I made was to increase my genealogy speaking opportunities. 2018 was a great year for speaking, I managed to present at almost 30 events during the year, covering most of the east coast of Florida from West Palm Beach to Amelia Island. Other resolutions that I made related to my health. I resolved to make a better effort of exercising and eating right. During 2018 I lost a total of 40 pounds and now weigh the same I did back in college when I was an athlete on the University's crew team. My running has improved as well as my endurance. Not bad for a 50-year old (wow, when did that happen?).

So, what do I resolve to do in 2019? Mainly keep doing more of what I did in 2018. I already have nearly 20 events scheduled in 2019, including a talk at RootsTech 2019 in Salt Lake City. I have been joking that my talk is the last hour of the last day in the last room at the end of the hallway, but at least I am speaking. I also want to write more in my blog(s) but there are so many other things going on. I will continue to plan and promote our local Indian River Genealogy Conference, speak at a variety of events, and maintain an active social media presence where I have provided information to many people helping them to do their research. So, maybe I will convert more of my talks to blog posts or use the information from the social media posts to provide more details on specific resources. - We'll just have to see what happens.

Have you thought about your resolutions? Or maybe you have decided you don't want to make specific plans for the new year. Even if you aren't into resolutions, the list below may give you some ideas on how to fit in more genealogy time or help others with their research.

1) FamilySearch - Take 15 minutes each day to connect a new source to your tree or if you have more time, search through unindexed digital images for your ancestors and connect the records to the individuals.

2) FamilyTree app - Have you downloaded the FamilyTree app on your phone or tablet? The app lets you work on your research anytime you have a free couple minutes. Maybe you have to wait in a doctor's office or pick the kids up from school. Use those minutes to add records to your tree or add more relatives.

3) Memories app - Do you have a box of old photos (or maybe recent photos) of deceased ancestors? Why not use the Memories app to copy the pictures and attach them to individuals in your FamilySearch family tree? It doesn't take very much time to copy a handful of pictures and you can tag them later when you have more time.

4) Billion Graves app - Do you live near a cemetery? Are you looking for an excuse to get outside and enjoy a nice walk? The Billion Graves app allows you to take photos of headstones and geo-references them so they can be mapped on the Billion Graves website. Once you take the photos they are uploaded to the site and others can transcribe them. If you aren't able to get out, you can help transcribe the images that others have collected.

5) Findagrave app - Findagrave.com also has an app that will upload the photos you take in a cemetery.

6) Index records - FamilySearch has hundreds of thousands of images that need to be indexed so others can find them through the search process. Once the records are indexed and reviewed, they become available to search and also provide hints for records on FamilySearch. It usually takes less than 30 minutes to complete a batch of images. Some images take much less time. There are many other indexing projects going on beside those at FamilySearch, so find one and participate. The more records that are made available, the more research we can successfully do.

7) Help plan a conference - Oh boy, that is a big task. I have initiated two different conferences over the last 10 years. These take months of planning but they also allow you to get to know others with your interest better. Both of the conferences I started required cooperation between the Family History Center and our local genealogical societies. One conference is now in its 9th year while the other is preparing for its 3rd conference. We have about 250 people attend each of these events. You don't have to start that big. You can start small with a church group or other organization and see how it goes. I have planning materials available that I can send out to anyone who is interested. This is a great way to get more people interested in our addiction.

So what are you planning on doing in 2019?

FamilySearch Indexing - Zoning Pilot Project

Ok, I know what you are thinking - Why can't he write on a regular basis like all the other bloggers? The answer is - I don't know. I love to write but I seem to only be able to do it when I get inspired, and then sometimes when I am inspired I don't have the time to focus. So, a few weeks ago I was waiting for my wife in a parking lot, listening to NPR. The program that was on was from The Millennial Podcast titled Nothing to Lose. That show talked about how the host began her podcast and the challenges she faced trying to find her inspiration. It inspired me to think about writing again (that was over a month ago). I had some great ideas but then just never was able to allocate the time to seriously sit down and write. I thought about writing down my ideas, I had many, but that just passed by without being pursued. So, this week when I had a few free hours, I sat down and started a new pilot indexing project for FamilySearch called Zoning. This was a fun project where volunteers view newspaper pages and block out stories with marriage, birth and death information. In the first day I completed over 670 zones in newspapers from Raleigh, North Carolina. I decided that this would be a good story to provide since this such a new project.

So, let's discuss a bit about indexing to start with. Anyone can volunteer to index the records that have already been digitized. To learn more about indexing visit the FamilySearch Indexing webpage. The indexing projects are moving ahead and more records are being made searchable each month. With the success of the indexing program and the addition of more digitized images online there has been a decrease in the need for microfilms to be sent out. Additionally, the cost of copying microfilms has increased substantially over the years. Many of you have probably read that the Family History Library will stop sending out microfilm records at the end of this week (September 7, 2017). The reason they are ending the microfilm rental process is that many of the films are now available online and they believe almost all of them should be available over the next three years, around 2020. Just to point out the major accomplishments achieved already in digitizing microfilm records, think about the following:

• Almost all of the microfilms rented by patrons in the past 5 years have now been digitized.
• Over 1.5 million microfilms (1.5 billion images) are now available online.
• Microfilms are being digitized at the rate of 1,000 rolls per day.
• Images that have not been indexed are available in the FamilySearch Catalog.

So, why is Zoning important? Zoning serves as the first step in indexing newspaper records. The zoners highlight the regions of each newspaper page that contain marriage, birth and death information that will be useful in our family history research. There are sets of key words that the zoners look for such as adoption, birthday, anniversary, divorce, engagement, estate, obituary, probate, etc.

If you are interested in signing up for the Zoning pilot project click here. Once your request has been approved and you are signed up you can begin zoning.

FamilySearch Zoning Pilot Project - initial view

Each batch consists of five newspaper pages that may or may not contain important information. As you read the page, looking for the key words, you begin to note which articles are subject to zoning. Currently the only events that are being zoned are those that contain birth, marriage or death information. 

Page after it has been Zoned for marriage information

The page above has several articles pertaining to marriage events such as engagements, anniversaries, announcements and marriages. Marriage information is highlighted in orange and the areas in blue are stories that are stitched together over several columns.

Page after it has been Zoned for death information

The page above has several articles pertaining to deaths. These stories are highlighted in green. Also, if you look at the side bar there is a page with a large red X on it. That indicates that there are no stories with birth, marriage, or death information. The large black circles indicate that those pages have been zoned.

Once you have zoned all the pages you can submit them and go on to zone more batches. This project is important for future indexing in that it provides the articles which will be added to the newspaper records.

I know some people have been having trouble indexing records, either because of the difficulty reading them or because of other reasons. This Zoning pilot project is an easy way for those who are having trouble contributing to the Indexing project to provide new records to the FamilySearch records.