Don R. Anderson, of FamilySearch and the Family History Library, gave the Keynote presentation: Family History in Your Pajamas. Outside the Convention Center, in the clear morning air, with the sun shining.
Mr. Anderson told more than 900 eager genealogists that doing genealogy in suits was about to be replaced by doing your genealogy in your pajamas! He assured us all that we still have to learn stuff, study, and become less busy–so we can take training classes and do the work.
Lots of help is needed: “It’s like drinking from a firehose,” he said.
Through FamilySearch you can take online research classes, index records, merge gedcoms, post collaborative family trees where your relatives can add what they know to what you have already posted–all from your home computer.
- FamilySearch Wiki, which now includes over 22,000 pages of locality and surname reference data from most countries of the world.
- Roots Television where you can watch video presentations by national experts such as Kip Sperry and Elizabeth Shown Mills.
- Family History Link which connects you to experts who can answer your questions and get you over the hump in your research.
- Forums which include people who currently reside in the very country where your ancestors originate and who can tell you where they lived and what the site looks like today.
- Record Search with more than 45 million new record images now online–30 million of them posted on Halloween–31 Oct 2008.
- Standard Finder with name variants that appear in the actual records you read and jurisdictions pin-pointed on maps with checklists of the records these jurisdictions create.
And Family History Platform partnering with 3rd-party genealogists and commercial groups and firms, like Ohana Software, Legacy, Roots Magic with utility programs that enhance your ability to access and use FamilySearch in your own family history.
These new tools are designed to make research for your ancestors simpler and less time consuming.
If we are to create a pedigree in the busy lives we currently lead, the process must require less time for better results. Stay tuned. Much new stuff is coming so you can do your family genealogy in your pajamas! Your favorite genealogist, Arlene Eakle http://www.arleneeakle.com
PS Tune in for more exciting breakthroughs from the Family History Expo in Mesa.