I recently read a message on one of the online message boards that disturbed me a bit. Apparently this person is rather new to genealogy and was experiencing some frustrations. He wrote, “I'm bummed though because I am not having any luck with Ancestry.com on finding any of my ancestors. Any advice on that?”
While genealogists have long dreamed of the day when we could sit at home and do all our family tree research via computer, we certainly have not arrived at that Utopian state yet. There are millions of genealogy records available today online, but the data available in electronic format at this time only scratches the surface. The writer of this online message apparently was not aware of the other resources available. From his brief message I would assume that he had only looked at the World Wide Web. Perhaps he only looked at the one site. I must say that several people jumped in to answer his online remarks, and the writer soon received a lot of good advice. However, for every person who asks such a question, I wonder if there are many more who never ask.
I have never seen any statistics on the topic of electronic genealogy resources available, but my “gut feel” is that probably less than 2% of the records of genealogical interest have ever been computerized.
In short, even with all the online databases available today, the newcomer who uses only an online database has searched no more than a tiny fraction of the genealogy records available. The newcomer to family tree research still needs to find and use the excellent genealogy sources that have been available elsewhere for years. Luckily, this is easy to do -- and it is rather inexpensive.
Microfilmed records of hundreds of millions of births, marriages, deaths, census records, military records, land transfers, and more are available at no cost or low cost. You can rent the microfilms at any of the thousands of local Family History Centers. In addition, there are still more microfilms available at many larger libraries as well as at the U.S. National Archives Regional Libraries. Major libraries often have both books and microfilms, as do may local genealogy societies. A few societies, such as the New England Historic Genealogical Society, may have very large libraries and many staff members who can help. Of course, writing letters asking for copies of old records still works very well.
In short, perhaps the genealogy community needs to work still harder at attracting, encouraging, and educating newcomers. Maybe I should not say, “work harder;” perhaps I should say, “find new approaches.” The new approaches may, in fact, be easier than today’s methods. I suspect there are millions of people who now believe that they can have the instant gratification of “pop-top genealogy:” go online and find all your ancestors before the ten o’clock news. These newcomers are disappointed when that doesn’t happen. I suspect many newcomers quickly drop the project and move on to some other interest.
The biggest losers in this process are the would-be genealogists and their families; they do not obtain the family heritage information they seek. However, the providers of online genealogy information also lose out since these short-term genealogists probably will not come back next year to find newly-added information. If we could get these newcomers interested, motivated, and even excited, genealogy database vendors would profit from future sales. I suspect that genealogy societies would profit as well as seeing their membership numbers increase. Best of all, the newcomers and their families would benefit as they discover their true heritage.
What is the answer? I suspect there are several. However, I would suggest that local and national genealogical societies hold the key. How about offering coupons online that can be downloaded and printed, offering a free three-month membership in a local, regional, or even national society? Even better, how about a trial membership in an ethnic society of interest? I am sure an Ohio resident of Hungarian descent would love to find out more about the resources available from the Hungarian Genealogy Society of Greater Cleveland. Today, most Hungarian descendants in Ohio probably don’t even know that such societies exist.
Wouldn’t it be great if we could give these newcomers an opportunity to discover the world outside of the online databases? Not all of these newcomers will take advantage of such an offer, but a percentage of them will. A society web site's introduction should suggest that the newcomer fill out a form and click a “Submit” button, and voila! They receive a newsletter or two and get invited to the next local meeting.
As I see it, the primary distribution mechanism for these “coupons” should focus on the various online web sites. I do not think the commercial companies will create these “electronic coupons” by themselves. They simply do not have enough profit motive to do so. In these lean business times, we (the genealogists) cannot sit back and wait for a public-minded commercial company to invent this incentive for us. Instead, someone within our own community should invent the “electronic coupon” and then supply it to all the genealogy vendors at no cost. I suspect that most vendors would be willing to include such an “electronic coupon package” on their web sites.
Indeed, any society interested in such offers can contact me and I will be glad to publicize such offers on www.eogn.com. However, that is but one outlet; we need many more.
Hopefully we can encourage the person who wrote, “I'm bummed though because I am not having any luck … finding any of my ancestors.”
Any other suggestions?
Dick,
You diagnose the problem correctly only as far as potential genealogists who are willing to learn and do good genealogy. But you miss the mark wide by not realizing that most of the customers of Ancestry and other commercial sites (or any brick and mortar repositories as well) are simply copiers of other persons' work. They have no inkling of proper genealogical methodology, and they don't want to either. It hurts their heads too much. All they want is instant gratification.
And while we may decry how the commercial enterprises have responded, they clearly do recognize the makeup of their market. Which is why they push trees and gadgets that are mostly unsourced and which produce even more junk genealogy.
Ancestry does have in its holdings articles and access to some of its books, which can indeed educate those willing to be educated. But unfortunately those customers are a drop in the genealogical ocean.
Regarding local societies, they are mostly a lost cause. So many refuse to have a meaningful web presence (i.e. other than a static bulletin board on some free site), and especially try to reduce their costs and increase their long term viability by publishing online to those willing to choose that option. And again, they can only educate those willing to be educated, and who care about sources and true proof rather than unsubstantiated family lore and the easiest data to research that is then analyzed wrongly. Which all presumes that those local societies even recognize good genealogy themselves, which they mostly don't from reading many of their journals.
Posted by: Mike | March 09, 2009 at 10:44 PM
Thanks for Tweeting this!
Ancestry helped me discover things no-one in my Mothers family new about, even those closest to the time period in question, who knew a couple of the people in question.
But I am at the stage now where I believe that the only way I'm going to break several critical log jams ( Don't ask, it's very complicated! Hee, hee!) I am going to have to find info that is not online, maybe even only known by relations no-one on my side even know exist.
But for a person with little free time, chance to travel, or even financial means this will take a while. ;-D
As the Family Genealogist I've slowly been pecking away at it for 20 years now, and won't stop now, ;-D
Posted by: Kiril The Mad Macedonian | March 09, 2009 at 11:54 PM
The development of the phenomenon of instant genealogy is just an extension of the ‘2 minute noodle’ world in which we live. There is a market for that type of genealogy and Ancestry (along with many others) has risen to meet the needs of that market.
Ancestry, like many of the online (and offline) genealogical organisations, go to great lengths to educate the market on the joys of family history research, often pointing out that ‘meaning’ lies not in the record but in the story that surrounds it.
However, these stories don’t come from hard cold data, but from the ‘ecology’ that’s created when the internet, card indexes, books, microfilm and people come together...and it’s the people that are the key. Family history is a collaborative activity – and in order to have the complete experience you need to share, to interact, to belong. The future of genealogy lies not online, nor offline, but in the ability to bridge the gap between the two.
Posted by: Brad Argent | March 10, 2009 at 01:14 AM
One of my favourite mentors taught me, "Genealogy-by-database produces pedigrees closely akin to those woeful paint-by-number puppy dogs."
Research can be difficult without INVOLVEMENT. Get emotionally involved with your ancestors, then locating and analysing solid source documents will be a delight. Online databases are vapid, tasteless, and cannot present the life of a person fully.
Happy Dae.
http://ShoeStringGenealogy.com
Posted by: Dae Powell | March 10, 2009 at 02:20 AM
I do not live in the United States but all my genealogy research is American-based, so I have to say that I am absolutely delighted with the progress I have made because of the Internet! There is no other way that I would have had the thrill of reading the handwritten description of my great-grandfather on his enlistment papers in the Union Army (cavalry) in New York City: 21 years old, 5'7", grey eyes, fair complexion. At almost the same time, on the other side of the country in Texas, my other great-grandfather enlisted in the Confederate Army (also cavalry): 21 years old 5'9", grey eyes, fair hair, fair complexion, bringing his own $200 horse. I am grateful that they never faced each other on a battlefield. I've seen the official Missing in Action papers regarding my uncle, a WWII pilot lost while flying The Hump. These included a description of the search party that attempted to locate the wreckage of the plane that had slammed into a mountain. A message posted on an army air force veterans website turned up a man who generously sent me a photo of the memorial erected by the Chinese in Nanking honouring the foreign airmen who gave their lives and showing the name of my uncle among those inscribed on the monument. In another instance, a newspaper clipping I located online placed an ancestor in a location I wouldn't have thought of and broke down a brickwall.
The ability to locate and view original documents that I would otherwise never see is wonderful! They bring my family research to life. I would love to be able to visit the National Archives and the local archives and libraries near where my ancestors lived. But I can't. I am grateful for the Internet bringing so much within my reach. With persistence and luck riches can be found.
Posted by: Jo Dunaway | March 10, 2009 at 03:34 AM
You are right on in some ways - but dead wrong in others. I have done genealogy off and on for over 60 years (started when I was just 18). I have spent the last year tapping into Ancestry's data base just working with the census records. It has allowed me to find where my ancestors moved to so I can further my research possibly by hiring someone from the local genealogical society.
I have discovered names of children I did not know existed. What ancestry has given me is beyond measure. I also have realized that I need to buy a book on how to use ancestry because I think I have tapped only about 20% of its potential.
That said -- I am lucky that 5 of my ancestral lines came west and settled in Oregon. I have gone down there and do hands on research every year for the past 15 years. I have made such wonderful friendships with so many cousins who are now gone. The newspaper files in Portland -- what a wealth of information. The files at Salem where you can buy a death certificate for 25 cents.
My list of death certificates to copy one day is nearing 200 (they have to have been gone for over 50 years to be able to copy the death cert. in Oregon). That is not counting the delayed birth certificates, marriage records, military records, court documents (I have at least 150 documents that I have copied over the last 10 years).
I found one court case a family feud over an estate) that fills 6 boxes in the Oregon archives. I never heard a word of this from my relatives. The story was buried long before I was born.
How about the uncle in southwest Washington that murdered himself and his wife and left 13 children orphaned -- 5 still under age. The newspaper files on that one fill a small box.
Nothing can replace the hands on genealogy BUT it is the records at Amazon that have enabled me to put the records together so that I know WHERE TO GO TO DO MY RESEARCH on a lot of these families.
I had a GR Aunt Georgia who was big into family records. There are only 3 of us still alive that remember her (she died in 1962) I recently inherited a trunk full of family memorabilia that has been in storage since 1965.
I made contact over the internet with a woman who is a descendent of the sister of Aunt Georgia. I have a picture of her grandmother as a young woman. Where does she live -- OREGON OF COURSE. We are going to meet and exchange information sometime this year. Only the internet allowed me to find her and I am going to take that long buried picture of her grandmother to her. I never made any kind of contact with her in all my trips to Oregon because Aunt Georgia married into the family and it is the GRAHAMS that I trace. It was through posting on an internet site that we found each other.
So I think the internet has opened up the world to us and it is the stepping stone to the real world where we so can find where we need to do the research.
I have an gr uncle that was stricken from all the family records. Only a letter that a cousin kept made us realize that he had lived to adulthood. The internet has allowed me to trace him from Iowa to Kansas to Texas. He stayed in Iowa when the rest of the family migrated to Oregon. Interestingly, his first move was to Ellsworth, Kansas. This was interesting to me because Ellsworth was my maiden name (my fathers name) and the Graham family is on my mothers side. He had 8 kids and so far we have only been able to trace 2 of them, but we are continuing to try.
So I think the final answer is that we all have to work in tandum to get as many records as we can on the internet, but also to make certain young genealogists know the value of research in the area where your ancestors live.
Posted by: Donna | March 10, 2009 at 04:51 AM
Well, I read the article and then the comments. I'm not sure what world you live in but any genealogist, professional or amateur, should simply employ all resources available to them. Online website have fantastic amounts of accurate information. For the UK I'm not sure, Dick, that all bmd records and all census records would or should be classed as 2%. Its not everything but they are the primary resources. And Mike, your comments about using these websites are ridiculous. Have you ever used one? You sound like someone who is unwilling to come out of the dark ages!!
I beleive in using all resources to the best of my ability. You shouldn't have to travel about the world, uncovering dusty manuscripts that you cannot read and waste valuable time and money doing so, only to refuse online help. Conversely, you shouldn't go through all sources online and then think that's it, I can do no more. What's wrong with both?????
Posted by: Richard | March 10, 2009 at 05:06 AM
After reading all of the above comments I know from past teaching experience, it is most difficult to reach those newbies who think the Internet provides all. I taught beginning through advanced genealogy from 1982 through 2005 and my classes dwindled until the continued ed departments of colleges, libraries, genealogical societies, and other sponsors just stopped. Why? The Internet came into such focus that people could not be reached to make the effort. Yes, it is a sad state of affairs when newbies do not realize the importance of ALL that is 'out there' for research and where it can be found.
Posted by: Jane | March 10, 2009 at 07:56 AM
Dick,
Ancestry.com, Heritage Quest, Family Search, Footnotes, Family Tree et al -- are all wonderful resources with some being better than others in some areas...just like we buy an array of reference books, various sized TVs, various land line phones (cord or cordless) -- they each serve a different purpose. I would suggest that newbies VOLUNTEER their time to help scan and load data so that it can be accessible to everyone...Until all data is scanned, digitized, uploaded etc will we be able to sit from the comforts of our computer digs and search....
Posted by: Ruthy Trusler | March 10, 2009 at 08:36 AM
Don't sell genealogical (and historical) societies short. Many are on the Internet. Many have been active on-line for years.
Most are short of, or even hard up for money, and can't necessarily compete with the glitter at some commercial sites although let's give the commercial and bigger genealogy websites credit. Many, like Ancestry (and Rootsweb) and Lost Cousins for instance, have articles recommending joining a local society or group to get help and to find many more resources not available on-line.
The society I'm most involved with (the British Columbia Genealogical Society: http://www.bcgs.ca) already gives out paper coupons for free visits to our private library and has a free e-newsletter on our website as well as lots of other info.
I'm interested in Dick's electronic coupon idea - how could we make this work? Maybe Ancestry.ca, for instance, would be interested if the Canadian provincial genealogical societies were?
Posted by: M. Diane Rogers | March 10, 2009 at 10:19 AM
Don't sell genealogical (and historical) societies short. Many are on the Internet. Many have been active on-line for years.
Most are short of, or even hard up for money, and can't necessarily compete with the glitter at some commercial sites although let's give the commercial and bigger genealogy websites credit. Many, like Ancestry (and Rootsweb) and Lost Cousins for instance, have articles recommending joining a local society or group to get help and to find many more resources not available on-line.
The society I'm most involved with (the British Columbia Genealogical Society: http://www.bcgs.ca ) already gives out paper coupons for free visits to our private library and has a free e-newsletter on our website as well as lots of other info.
I'm interested in Dick's electronic coupon idea - how could we make this work? Maybe Ancestry.ca, for instance, would be interested if the Canadian provincial genealogical societies were?
Posted by: M. Diane Rogers | March 10, 2009 at 10:23 AM
As a family historian who started a family history social group at my daughter's school two years ago and instantly attracted a lot of beginners I am very grateful for Ancestry. It gives beginners the chance to actually get results fairly quickly, they then get hooked and many of those initial beginners are now stalwarts of the local County Record Office. There are lots of people out there who want to start looking at their family history but really don't know where to start. In England and Wales if you can find an ancestor who was alive in 1901 (or now 1911)you can get started fairly easily thanks to Ancestry.
That being said once they are started I do push them to visit repositaries of primary sources such as the County Record Office but these still have rather inconvenient hours. For those whose ancestors lived miles away I say thank you to the internet. It has given me the chance to trace my mother-in-law's great uncle who emigrated from Scotland to Washington DC and my father's great aunt who went to Kansas as well as numerous emigrants to Canada.
And what about those of us with Scottish ancestors? Scotlandspeople does a great job!!
And yes beginners are careless of sources, don't take note of where they found the information and generally mess up but we all made mistakes in the beginning. Don't forget this is done for fun - for most of us it's not a career! Thank Goodness it is no longer the elitist pastime it used to be - only available to those with enough time and money to travel to obscure places to find information.
Also the fact that so many are now interested in their family history is having knock-on effects for academia. The more records are digitised the more will become available for researchers in person as archives put their catalogues online. (Has to be good for academic researchers)
BE tolerant - to each his own.
Posted by: jacqui | March 10, 2009 at 10:51 AM
Jo Dunaway
Where did you find physical descriptions of both Union (Tennessee) and Confederate (Texas) soldiers?
Posted by: BBI | March 10, 2009 at 11:46 AM
Ancestry.com at less than a dollar a day is a bargain!!
Friends come for lunch, but they don't get the same old chicken salad and gossip. I sit them down and bring up the 1930 US Census and things wind along from there. They leave exhausted clutching a large sheaf of papers with a big smile on their face.
Posted by: Meriwether | March 10, 2009 at 12:03 PM
The internet is a tool, it is not the tool box. Sometimes you just have to get dusty...visit a court house, walk a cemetery, plan a research vacation. But there will always be those who want to take shortcuts. They want answers now, they want you to do their research for them...I call them push-button genealogists. Push a button...merge...push a button...merge. They aren't learning how to research and they aren't learning about their family, they're learning how to copy from others.
Local genealogical and historical societies traditionally supported their libraries and meeting locations by gathering information, publishing it and selling the books and pamphlets. Many of them have a lot of "grass roots" data bases in print form that isn't available anywhere else. I'm always seeing suggestions that they should be putting that information online. But wouldn't that be like eating the seed corn? Not only wouldn't they be getting any income from this information to support their society and the quest to gather even more information, but they would also have to buy a server or use a hosting service. That would turn these data bases from a positive cashflow item into an expense. Many of these small societies are on very thin budgets, putting their information online could bankrupt them.
Posted by: Adrian Brisee | March 10, 2009 at 12:19 PM
How many of us who now preach the importance of sourcing our information, searching out original documents, and analyzing and understanding what documents say started our family history odyssey that way? Somewhere along the line someone pointed us in the right direction.
That's a primary role of genealogy societies. Here, in a small community in Southern Texas, we have undertaken that challenge. We recently held two free two-hour Beginning Genealogy Workshops, thinking we would attract 20-25 newbies at most. To our surprise, 100 people attended the two workshops, 84 of which were new to genealogical research, or at least felt the need to learn some new methods. Feedback from one attendee was "Now, I am going home and start doing things right."
Later, we will hold another workshop which will be followed by a more advanced 7-week genealogy course. This will cover all the proven traditional methods of genealogical research, as well as how to harvest the best from the Internet.
Posted by: magenie | March 10, 2009 at 12:43 PM
It's too bad that researching one's family doesn't require a license the same as driving a car or operating heavy machinery -- with a rigorous test before a license is granted. (Maybe the test could be the portal for accessing online data; once you'd passed it, then you'd have a license number that allowed you to go right to the data on any site.)
I know there are plenty of beginner's books out there, but having grown used to tweeting and tm'ing and FaceBooking with instant "results", not many people have the patience to wade through a book (so last century) to learn how to do genealogy, let alone spend hours in a physical repository looking for that one little nugget of data in a lot of old papers. However, from reading publications with what passed for family tree research prior to the www, I don't think the desire for instant data and lots of names to collect is a new problem, just a speeded-up and more widespread one.
Most of my first year of full-time genealogy (2005) was spent on ancestry.com, looking up census records, SSDIs, WWI draft registrations, etc., for everyone in every branch of my family. Only then did I have the grounding (and the enthusiasm and curiosity) to start looking in person for marriage records, gravestones, baptisms, Indian reservation employment ledgers, etc., to flesh out the online research. Along the way, I discovered several distant cousins through message boards who have been of inestimable value in adding information to what I'd found.
Both parts of the equation are vital -- online and on-the-ground research. Like some of the persons above, each of us should make sure that we're helping to teach newbies and encouraging and supporting our local societies as much as possible.
On a positive note, at least the person quoted in Dick's article had tried to find his family on Ancestry.com before posting his frustrated plea. Way too many posts ask for all of the available data for a given family without any effort having been expended. Wish we could vote those folks off the island!
Posted by: Mary Beth | March 10, 2009 at 01:02 PM
Dick (and others) could you possibly tell me what I am doing wrong on Ancestry.com? Since they provide the green leaf to my e-mail box of family discoveries (my family tree is public on their website)I click to the source and check source/image for correctness;then I click "attach". When I go to my list of all individuals there is a posting of five, ten and fifteen listings of one individual. Then I have to remove one at a time, which takes hours. I contacted Ancestry.com and they give me no answer. I have been researching 20+ years and I am now 81 yrs old and cannot travel to many places anymore; therefore I am dependent on the internet. I have purchased George Morgan's Ancestry.com book and Google your family tree as well subscribscription to websites and research magazines. Can some of you kind souls help me? I am at a brickwall for my ggrandfather John W. Gresham/Grissom b. abt 1818 in N.C. Granville County, NC and Franklin County and Vance County are where most relatives lived. My ggrandfather John W Gresham married Julia Ann Brame Apr. 1840 in Granville Cty. NC. My e-mail address is dgsaun1@hotmail.com.
Posted by: Doris Saunders | March 10, 2009 at 06:04 PM
Dick, an excellent article. I really like the idea of coupons.
I've been a hobbyist researcher for about ten years, so I started just as the internet was starting up. There are great tools in Ancestry, Family Search (ok - take the IGI with a grain of salt, but the new offerings are great), Rootsweb >WorldConnect, but they only set the stage for further research.
That's research is at court houses, historical societies, and involves some travel -- make it part of vacation/discovery trips. Although I have over 10k linked names from a mid-1700s emigrant from Germany and his descendants, I still just have the skeletal, and over the next five years, the goal will be to work with lateral descendants, and really add "personality" to the cold facts.
In the course of this, I have sought the assistance of volunteers on many sites, and reciprocated by being a simialar volunteer. I ask those who seek my assistance to return the favor to others. Some plead newness, and I tell them that local research, even for others, is a developmental tool.
I'm a possible next-term president of a local genealogical society, and although a cadre of members do exceptional work in their area of special contribution, as a group, we are totally lacking in publicity, and "gimmicks" to attract new members, and seriously helping those getting started in this hobby/quest. That's about the principal reason that I am seeking the post. Dick had a blog entry within the past few weeks, and his comments than and today and all of your responses will really be guiding me, and will be discussion materials for our Board, to help me explain where more of our (my) energies need to be.
Posted by: 2burmdad | March 10, 2009 at 06:04 PM
---> could you possibly tell me what I am doing wrong on Ancestry.com?
I cannot imagine that you are doing anything "wrong" on Ancestry.com or on any other web site. What bothers me is that some people, in fact, many people, ONLY use websites. They never look at microfilm, original records, books, maps, or any of the other thousands of resources available. My concern is only with the people who RESTRICT THEMSELVES to only using Internet sources. They miss a lot. Sadly, that seems to be more and more common every year.
- Dick Eastman
Posted by: Dick Eastman | March 10, 2009 at 06:16 PM
Good article Dick. The "coupon" idea is a nice one.
I surely don't have the solution for all the newbies who are "bummed" about not finding their "family tree" instantly. I have tried to help out many newbies over the years. Most are already so annoyed at not getting instant results that they aren't really interested in helpful suggestions. And who do I blame for this state of affairs? Commercial genealogy sites -- primarily Ancestry. Their focus lately has been on attracting new, inexperienced customers. The spinning leaves, new search "experience", emphasis on family trees, and other doodads and eye candy are all geared toward new, inexperienced customers. Unfortunately, many of these new customers are immediately disappointed and angry at Ancestry. (Example: "I was born in 1977 in New York and they don't even have my birth certificate online!)
These poor new customers have no idea what real genealogical research is about. And they are angry that they just spent $150 - $200 a year for something that is not at all what they expected. So they will not renew their subscriptions next year. A cynic might suggest that this is exactly what the commercial sites want: a quick $150 and almost no usage of their system.
But it seems to me that losing these newbies will be a great loss to commercial websites and to genealogy generally. Experienced, returning customers are the people who really support the whole genealogical community (websites, libraries, societies, etc.)
I think your coupon idea is one good way to attract newbies and give them a taste of genealogy, without their spending much money. If they get "hooked" on genealogy, everyone benefits.
I think we (and the commercial websites) also have to encourage the idea that part of the fun of genealogy is the chase, the investigation, the detective work, the challenge, the thrill of finally solving a difficult problem. If genealogy were easy, I would have given it up years ago. As it is, I'm in my 3rd decade of genealogical research, and I won't be quitting any time soon. At least not until I find out who Mary Young's parents were!
Posted by: Sharon Meeker | March 10, 2009 at 06:59 PM
To BB: I found the information on Civil War soldiers in the Ancestry.com Civil War Collection and in Footnote.com Civil War:1860-1880 category. Also found information in the NARA veterans database.
Posted by: Jo | March 10, 2009 at 07:13 PM
It seems as though people jump online with little or no training or experience. Many (not all) are giving the impression that they want instant gratification and cannot be bothered to learn.
I was the newbie that read every book I could get my hands on before I even attempted to fill out my first ancestor chart. Now people ask on message boards, "which online source is best — GenWeb, Ancestry, or one of the others?" and claim to have hit a brick wall without even having done all their census research.
A local library is doing a "class"... more like an interest group. The one I attended had handouts and seven people at Ancestry's Library Edition, but no formal instruction was offered. The librarian brought out some books, including "Unpuzzling Your Past." Most of those present seemed new to genealogy, yet nobody checked out that book.
One message board post asked, "I'm going to Washington DC. Where can I find military records, and what will they tell me?" I'm glad they're asking, but I feel like the (frustrated?) genealogist who replied to one message board post, "This is too complicated to explain here... try reading a book."
Okay, putting HELP!!!!!!! in the subject line of a message board post is a newbie mistake that we can forgive. However, many people on message boards (especially US posters) cannot spell or compose a sentence. Maybe it's because of all the texting nowadays. If you cannot present your facts clearly, how can people follow your research or try to assist you? After trying to decipher a sentence or two, I often just give up. No wonder some of these posts have no replies.
Posted by: Elsie | March 10, 2009 at 08:49 PM
Let me expand the coupon idea a bit further...
* A coupon for 30 minutes of time with a genealogist from a local society to discuss the newbie's research challenges - what to do next. The genealogist comes with a kit of society material and a list of nearby repositories.
* A coupon for free admission to the society's beginning genealogy class.
* A coupon for $5 off the yearly membership as an inducement to join.
IF (and it's big IF I guess)the Who Do You Think You Are? TV shown on NBC takes off in the summer, then societies may be deluged with seekers of information. Smart societies will be ready for the deluge by having their beginners classes polished up and scheduled, their "social club speakers" ready to go out and entice Rotary, Kiwanis, church, etc. group members, and the like. It may be a real exciting year.
Posted by: Randy Seaver | March 10, 2009 at 10:39 PM
I'm a "newbie" and joined the Ancestry site in October last year out of curiosity about my family tree. My Mom's parents have passed away and with them the family stories I wish I would have been more interested to ask of them and write down when they were alive. My Mom has done her best to tell me as much as she can remember.
By using the Ancestry site I was able to find the majority of my clues from other users who made their family trees public. That furthered my curiosity. I found a 6th cousin, twice removed from Ohio on my Mother's side from posting on an ancestry board who was able to provide me with information I used along with census records and then writing to the Ohio Historical Society and an Ohio Library to confirm the identity my 4X GGrandmother. I live in California and I've traced my maternal line to Ohio, Kansas and Oklahoma from using the internet, email and filling out some forms and putting them in the mail.
I've also found information on birth dates and death dates from the Find a Grave website and I contribute and give back by posting information about my family that I have yet to find any place else. Additionally, I'm considering volunteering my time on that site by going to cemeteries in my area and taking pictures of headstones for others who don't live in Southern California.
I just want to say that as a "newbie" I am interested in learning how to source my information and not rely on others for birth dates and death date information, etc. I found my way to this site in my hopes of learning more ways of research. So some of the comments regarding "newbies" are a little offensive to me. I don't think it's fair to group all "newbies" together. Everyone has to start somewhere. I've personally sent emails to several potential relatives that have their family trees posted online and rarely get a response back and that is disappointing but it doesn't make me give up or preclude me from filling out some forms and sending $20 to a County Record Office or a Historical Society in the hopes of obtaining more clues. I'm don't expect that everything will be for free. I'm not the type to post to a message board without having done alot of homework and including all my research and information.
The exciting and "new to me" information I'm learning about my family tree only makes me desire to find more ways to find out who they were and where they came from. So I hope the experienced genealogists keep people like me in mind when they think all "newbies" are the pop-top variety.
Posted by: Wendy | March 11, 2009 at 03:06 AM
@ Randy Seaver
When the WDYTYA? program aired in Autralia, societies saw a significant increase in foot traffic - which resulted in a growth in membership. However, those that benefited most were the ones who were more dynamic in their approach and open to a younger membership base.
One drawback from WDYTYA? is that societies had many people turning up sayng "Can I have my their family tree?"... WDYTYA? creates a lot of expectations in the minds of potential family historians.
Posted by: Brad Argent | March 11, 2009 at 03:16 AM
I just want to add a suggestion that I found VERY helpful. In my small town in Michigan we had a Family History Center of the LDS church. The lady on duty, (now down to two days a week) was great in teaching me how to order materials from their vast holdings. Together we found lots of info. I suggest that people visit one in their city or nearby. A wealth of material plus help.
Posted by: Carole Bemke | March 11, 2009 at 09:00 PM
In 1993 I started as a gene helper at the library, today our society provides genealogical volunteers 3 days a week at the library, where a beginner or someone traveling can come in and get some help from a genealogist. Most of our programs are free to anyone that wants to attend, I fought hard to make sure our mail list was open to everyone that wanted to subscribe, and now we have a blog which is open to everyone also. I saw a comment about local genealogical societies not wanting to post their books online because of loss of income, our society has not made over $300 from sales of books in years, so what is our big money maker? Research, and research has changed a lot over the years, but there are still people interested in court records, local obits, cemeteries, land records, etc. Used to be the big research item was census, but we seldome get any requests for census records anymore, they come with the cesus records already looking for more.
Posted by: Charles Hansen | March 15, 2009 at 10:36 PM
Join my local genealogy society? Why? Attending their meetings is a waste of valuable time - time I could spend researching in the library, on the internet, ... Unless you live in or close by a large city a local genealogy society isn't likely to have the time or resources to put on quality workshops - which is all a society is really good for in my estimation, anyway.
What I've learned about doing genealogy correctly I've learned on my own - magazine and books. Now, offer me a coupon for one of those and I'll snatch it up in a heartbeat!
The online resources will never change their marketing strategies, so we family historians need to learn to work with them - not against them - and mine their vast collections just as skillfully as we do microfilm, microfiche, indexes, etc.
And then while we're doing all of that we need to mentor someone in our family so that our own efforts will not be relegated to the trash after we're gone. Probably no coupon for that!
Posted by: Linda Morgan Clark | March 16, 2009 at 07:18 AM
Dick, your article usefully points to need for expanded activity of genealogical societies, and I very much like Randy Seaver's suggestion of the coupon-for-genealogical-help idea.
However, I think the major-site marketers are much at fault in failing to point to the gedcom/tree approach as having deep and intrinsic flaws going back to the original program platforms.
To pick two, TGN and LDS, their databases are quite variable in degree of error. With digitized images of actual records, one still must cope with highly erroneous indexing (familysearch labs has no interface for corrections). NewFamilySearch evidently is being developed as compiled from databases with uncountable factual errors, thus replicating TGN's frighteningly (probably 95%) inaccurate OneWorldTree.
At present, the newbie you speak of can spend a really long time copying gedcoms and from sundry trees, without ever running into comment from site operators or other Tree Persons regarding evidence (need for, lack of, what it is).
Will LDS or TGN purge their databases of unsubstantiated genealogical claims? Of course not. The mere size of the databases is utilized to promote their respective objectives and recruitment.
Recently you wrote about technological watersheds in the works and in the future. But a different watershed has been reached: the experience of the newbie you speak of, but who does not give up because there are plenty of trees out there. There is now such an expectation of instant gratification that when a message board query gets a response giving specific research suggestions, the respondent is replied to with anger in the vein of "if you can't hand me the data on a silver platter, why did you respond with this useless school-marmish approach?"
LDS and TGN and the others have substantially helped bring us to this point.
Posted by: Jade | March 16, 2009 at 02:02 PM
I think it is a sad discredit to new and young family searchers to slam us for not having a perfect approach or call us copiers of others work. I started with my Mother's work which was done writing letters to far flung family members. Without that and a photo album I would never have got interested and that would be a shame. Most of what she had I have found sources for. Starting somewhere and loving the search and find is the main thing. How exciting it is that just one more person gets interested in the family history of the true pioneers of the world and searches wherever they can for information. It is not ever going to be possible for some of us to dig through the treasures and enjoy the search in a repository although it is a dream we all have. We wait patiently and pay willingly for what is made available to us online and send for the originals when we can afford to. I, for one, do volunteer transcribing and have for ages including doing the available online courses given. Let's just all do what we can to make as many people interested as we can. Some of us read classic books and some read romance but the love of reading is the main thing. I like to think that finding a long lost cousin and emailing them a photo of a relative they have never seen is the most valuable thing I can share. As a society member I have never submitted a search because I feel that what I have to go on is inadequate and doesn't show that I have looked enough for records on my own. Maybe that is a good place to start with changing things. Contact your members and see how they are doing and maybe they will feel encouraged to keep going. Maybe a hint of the day or a find of the day? One free record search with a new membership? It doesn't have to be a lot to make me happy. Just getting the 1916 Census with my Grandparents on it was a treasure and I look at it almost every day!
Posted by: Darlene | March 17, 2009 at 09:31 AM
Experienced genealogists writing handbooks for newbies might be like University professors writing a primer. Maybe we need a column written from the heart by a new searcher that could be based on free time on a new site or a premium historical society site. The searcher would have a set allowed time each week to search and would tell their story. Experts could add comments and flavour by gently exposing different approaches that would work the next week. I would read that every week for sure!
Posted by: Darlene | March 17, 2009 at 09:38 AM