Online PAF Tutorial

The following is an announcement of a new online tutorial:

A new online tutorial is now available at no cost to students of family history and anyone interested in using Personal Ancestral File (PAF), the widely used genealogy computer program available from the LDS Church. "It is a learning aid and reference for BYU students and others who wish to learn about the PAF family history program," said Kip Sperry, Professor of Family History at BYU.

This free online interactive tutorial is primarily intended for BYU's Introduction to LDS Family History (Religion 261) students, but can benefit students in other family history courses as well, and is accessible to anyone including non-students. It is most helpful to those who haven't used the PAF program before, or have had little experience with PAF and may only need help in certain areas. It is designed so users can pick and choose which areas of PAF they need to know more about. Click on either a step-by-step textual guide or an interactive demonstration for each point of reference in the menu. Because the interactive tutorial has audio components, speakers or headphones are needed to be able to listen to the demonstrations.

The tutorial covers the entire PAF program, from importing information from other family history programs to exporting your information to TempleReady. The website format displays a menu panel along the left side and a display panel for information and demonstrations on the right side. The top of the menu begins with How to Use the PAF Tutorial, followed by options describing how to install PAF, and continuing with a total of 17 sections of tutorial instruction.

Some of the sections include Create/Edit Individual and Create/Edit Marriage within your pedigree chart, PAF Views, Backups to PAF files, GEDCOMs, and Match/Merge. The tutorial is based on lessons taught to Religion 261 students and focuses on the essential elements of PAF that are taught in that course.

For more information about PAF and family history, go to http://familyhistory.byu.edu. The link for the PAF tutorial is accessible through this website by clicking the PAF Tutorial link under the Resources menu.

The PAF tutorial is also directly available at http://paftutorial.byu.edu.

This project was developed through the cooperation of BYU's Center for Instructional Design (CID), Kip Sperry, Professor of Family History (faculty advisor and project coordinator), and the Center for Family History and Genealogy at BYU.