Category Archives: Genealogy Tech News

Jackson County Probate Court consolidates with Juvenile Court

This announcement came after giving notice to the Jackson County Bar Association, the Jackson County Genealogical Society and Jackson County Title Companies and Examiners and allowing the opportunity for the foregoing to provide comment. Beginning Dec. 13, neither probate filings nor marriage license applications will be accepted at the primary courthouse and will only be accepted at… Read More »

Family Tree is Live on FamilySearch.org for All Users

Much has been written about Family Tree, the first of several site enhancements for FamilySearch.org, and the replacement for new.familysearch.org.  We’re happy to report that Family Tree is now live on FamilySearch.org and is available to all users. This opens up the contribution, collaboration, editing, and sourcing tools of Family Tree to researchers—including potential family members—… Read More »

Genealogists Win With FamilySearch/OCLC Partnership

Two indispensable genealogy resources are joining forces, resulting in a win for genealogists wanting to access offline family history materials. FamilySearch and OCLC (the Online Computer Library Center) have reached an agreement to list the holdings of the FamilySearch genealogy catalog in WorldCat, the OCLC’s online search portal to catalogs from 74,000 repositories in more than 70 countries. Under… Read More »

DropBox vs. Flash Drives

Many of us remember when ZIP drives came out. 100MB of cheap, portable storage, and they were such an improvement over floppy disks. Click-of-death issues aside, the ZIP drives were wonderful for their time but you don’t see them much any more because of USB flash/jump/pen drives (choose one, everyone seems to call them something… Read More »

Avoiding the Inevitable Crash

All computers and other electronic devices, no matter how technologically advanced, will at some point in time crash and cease functioning. The point at which that happens is determined by immutable physical laws but may be accelerated by environmental issues as well as by the simple passage of time. Since hardware crashes are inevitable, from… Read More »

Family Tree Service on FamilySearch.org is Coming to All Users

Within the next few months, FamilySearch will introduce Family Tree. The first of many updates planned for FamilySearch.org, Family Tree will bring collaborative web tools together with the resources of the world’s largest genealogy organization to create a free and engaging way to discover, preserve, and share your family history. Watch a special introductory video that covers… Read More »

Genealogy World, November 5-9

Here is some interesting tidbits going on in the genealogy world: The University of Indianapolis is teaming up with Ancestry.com in a first-of-its-kind initiative to encourage its students to explore and reflect on how their family history impacts their identity. All UIndy students, faculty and staff have been granted access to all Ancestry.com content available from computers and… Read More »

Genealogy World, October 22-26

Here is some interesting tidbits going on in the genealogy world: The Chronicling America free, searchable database of historic US newspapers, has posted its 5 millionth newspaper page. Launched by the Library of Congress and the National Endowment for the Humanities in 2007 as part of the National Digital Newspaper Program, the site digitizes newspapers published between… Read More »

North American Indexing Volunteers Invited to Join New US Immigration & Naturalization Community Project

FamilySearch Announces Post-1940 Community Project FamilySearch recently issued this announcement: North American Indexing Volunteers Invited to Join New US Immigration & Naturalization Community Project More than 160,000 volunteer indexers made the 1940 U.S. Census available for searching in just five months. The project was an unprecedented success that dramatically illustrated what the genealogical community can accomplish… Read More »

September Genealogy News

FamilySearch announces that the 1940 U.S. Federal Census indexing project is wrapped up, and that indexing is beginning on the new U.S. Immigration and Naturalization Community Project. Visit http://familysearch.org/immigrationfor more information and to volunteer. Another indexing project has begun: the Italian Ancestors Project. Visit http://familysearch.org/italian-ancestors for more information and to volunteer. The Federation of Genealogical Societies has announced the publication of… Read More »

Record Relatives’ Stories With New, Free iPhone App

If you’re headed to a family reunion or even just visiting Grandma’s house, here’s a free app you might consider downloading to your iPhone (let’s hope there’s an Android version out soon): The Saving Memories Forever app lets you record family stories, then store them on the Saving Memories Forever website. The app is free, as is a… Read More »

Jackson Monument Company offering new way to commemorate lives of loved ones

The Jackson Monument Company, Inc., 14 Fairmont St., has teamed up with LifeMarker.com to give families a new, innovative way to remember and commemorate the lives of their loved ones who have passed away. According to Jackson Monument Company, Inc., employee, Denise Arnold, LifeMarker allows families to load “videos, pictures, obituaries, life stories, etc.,” of… Read More »