Facebook - A Genealogist's Tool for Record Keeping, Research, and Collaboration

Benefits of Using Facebook for Genealogy

• Facebook serves as a type of journal and records everything you post in chronological order.

• Facebook can keep you up-to-date with your family, both immediate and extended.

• Facebook can re-connect long-lost family members.

• Facebook can aid genealogical research with pages specific to localities, families, organizations, businesses, etc.

• Facebook offers a place to store and share family history information.

Issues to Be Aware of and Work Around

Privacy – Restrict your personal information, choose your friends carefully, take advantage of extra security measures such as two-step verification.

Photo resolution – Photos are not stored on Facebook in a high resolution.

Technology Comfort Level – Not all your family will be comfortable with Facebook due to experience with technology. Think of it as an opportunity to connect with some, but not all, family members. 

Facebook may not replace methods you already use as a genealogist, but it can certainly be a useful addition. You may make discoveries and see pictures you never would have known, and offer that same opportunity to family you know and to cousins you might never have met.

LDS Pioneer Resources - Mormon Migration

For those with LDS Pioneer ancestors, there are websites to find and share information about your family.

The Mormon Migration website is a "remix" of the old Mormon Migration Index CDs. The data from the old cd's has been added upon and put on the site in an easily searchable format. 


You can search by name of person, name of ship, or date. A search for the name "John Kelly" yielded the these results:

You would click on the name of the ship (Camillus, above) to access all available resources about the voyage including personal accounts, passenger lists, and (when you're lucky) images of the ship manifest, as seen below:

Wherever you see blue writing on the site, you can click and learn more. The images of passenger lists are also clickable in order to view them larger. You may have to go through several images in order to find the person you're looking for.

If you have information the Mormon Migration website doesn't, you can submit your information and have it considered as an addition to the database. You would click on "Share what you know about this voyage", as seen in blue italicized writing in the center of the image above.

Go to the site, Mormon Migration, and see what you can learn and share about your Mormon Pioneer ancestors. It's a really easy site to navigate...no pun intended! 

Thine in the bonds of happy sailing - Caroleen

Free Digitized Newspaper Collections, Part 1

Tips to take full advantage of sites

with digitized newspapers:

• Search the site extensively. You can't get yourself into trouble unless you're downloading something so point and click and see what you can find.

• Look for tabs and sidebars which may lead to more information.

• Take advantage of tutorials and "how to use this site" buttons. Sometimes "?" and and "what's this?" appear at various places on a page. You can click on them and learn more about using the site.

•  Make sure you're searching correctly. Watch for correct dates, locations, parts of the newspaper you're searching (ie, advertisements, articles, editorials, headlines, etc.)

Here is a list of some digitized newspaper 

collections available to search online:

Online Historical Newspapers Website:

https://sites.google.com/site/onlinenewspapersite/Home

The Olden Times - Historic Newspapers Online:

http://theoldentimes.com


BYU Family History Library Periodicals and Newspapers 
(Scroll down to the "Newspapers" section for many links to digitized newspaper collections. Some are indexes but many are fully searchable sites with images of articles. Contact the BYU Family History Library regarding passwords, if needed. Some may be freely available.):

http://lib.byu.edu/sites/familyhistory/periodicals

Utah Digital Newspapers: 

http://digitalnewspapers.org
  

Tips to find digitized newspapers 

specific to your research: 

  

• Visit the "Chronicling America" website as discussed in a previous blog post on this site. You can learn which newspapers were available in which locations at which time in American History. If you know what you are looking for, it may be easier to locate.

• Use specific words on Google to do your search: Newspaper(s), Historical, Genealogy, County Name, City Name, State Name, Online, etc. I used the words: Grosse Pointe Michigan Genealogy Newspapers. It turned up results that lead me down a winding path to an elaborate collection of digitized newspapers from the ealy 1900's through today.

• Visit state university and college sites to view their digitized holdings. Many have extensive collections.

Though the Internet is vast, and digitized collections may be elusive, finding your ancestors in free online digitized newspapers is not only possible, but highly likely. Use newspaper sites and creative searches as a start. Use your desire to find your family as your motivation for discovery. Desire is the biggest factor in the finding.

Thine in the bonds of finding your family - Caroleen

 

Create an Online Genealogical Survey to Capture the Interest of Your Family

Asking your relatives a lot of questions to aid your genealogical research can be an overwhelming, tedious or boring experience for them. What if you created a colorful survey to capture their interest and enthusiasm?

Google Docs will allow you to create an online survey that is so fun to fill out, your family will be asking you to send them another.

Here's how to do it:

Go to docs.google.com

Sign in or Create an Account and then click on the red "Create" button. 

From there a dropdown box appears where you will click on "Form".

When you click on "Form" you'll be brought to the page where you write your survey:

After filling in the survey form, you can share it with the people you want to fill it out. Click on the Google+ share button to share it with your Google+ Circles. Click on "Email this form" to send it to people through email. Be sure to UNcheck the "Include form in this email" if you want people to see the pretty background as they fill out your survey.

 This is what the email looks like when you send it to someone:

If they click on the link, they'll see a survey like this: 

When you go back to your Google Docs, you'll see the survey you created in your list of documents.

Click on it to be brought to a spreadsheet of responses to your survey.

The answers your respondents give will be in the spreadsheet. You have all their answers in one place!

From the spreadsheet you can also edit your form or view it live by clicking on "Form" at the top.
 

And that's how you make a survey that can be used for family history.

If you'd like to see the Family History Photo Survey I created, CLICK HERE.

You may find survey making has other useful applications, too. I used it to find out what kind of Easter treats my family want this year. (We're at 17 descendants and still counting so holidays are getting a bit more complicated!) If you want to see it, Click Here to see the Easter Treat Survey. You can fill it out, but I can't guarantee you'll get a treat!


Now try making a survey yourself!

Thine in the bonds of family history fun!  Caroleen