Post on 06-Jun-2015
What I Wish Everyone in the Church Knew About Family History
Ben Baker
My Background
• Nearly 5 years as a Software Engineer at FamilySearch
• Currently work on Family Tree, but try to use all our products
• Have previously given several presentations going into more detail on several similar topics. To view/download these presentations go to http://www.slideshare.net/bakers84.
3 Great Myths of Family History
My genealogy is done / There is nothing for me to do
Doing Family History is too hard and time consuming
Family History is for old people
Purpose of FamilySearch
The purpose of the Family History
Department is to help Church members
fulfill their divinely appointed
responsibility to discover their families
and submit their names for temple
ordinances
Key Indicator Reports
Ask your• Family history consultant(s)• High priest group leader• Bishop• Stake presidentabout this report for your stake/ward.
Share Your Knowledge
As shown from the purpose statement and key indicator report, increasing participation among all members is paramount.
Share what you know with:• Your family, from immediate family to distant cousins
• Your friends, from ward members to those not of our faith
Why Youth Are Needed
Elder Neal L. Anderson challenged the youth at RootsTech 2014 “to set a personal goal to help prepare as many names
for the temple as baptisms you perform in the temple.” https://www.lds.org/topics/family-history/temple-challenge
Why?
Because temples shouldn’t have to provide nameswhen your own family needs your help and
Experiencing “both halves” of the blessing builds faith
NO MORE TEMPLE WELFARE!
Critical Paradigm To Understand – Part 1
Where you can help the most1. Find your relatives in indexed records and link
them to persons in Family Tree2. Upload photos, stories and documents of your
relatives and link them to persons in Family Tree3. Help index historical records4. Clean up data in Family Tree5. Reserve temple ordinances for your family
Family Tree
Digitized Images
Indexed Records
Historical Records (Microfilm and
original documents)
Living Memory
Photos, Stories, Documents, Audio
Completed LDS Temple
Ordinances
Critical Paradigm To Understand – Part 2
The best way
to find people who need LDS temple work is to find people who are NOT in the tree yet
The best way
to find people not in the tree yet is
to find them in a historical record with someone who is already in the tree
Embrace Change
Embrace change, don’t be afraid of it
Click on new things to see what they do
I don’t think you can mess up anything in a single click, but be sure to read warnings.
Keep up to Date
Read the FamilySearch blog at https://familysearch.org/blog/en/ for updates on new features and other happenings.
Subscribe to the blog via RSSGoogle “how to subscribe to an rss feed” for helps – I use Outlook and feedly
Use the categories and search for information you’re most interested in
Family Tree is “Our Tree”
• Freely available to anyone worldwide• Reduces duplication of effort• Increases collaboration to arrive at the best
information• Information added outlives contributors• Link person profiles to additional information• More on this topic in my presentation “Finding ‘My
Tree’ Within FamilySearch Family Tree’s ‘Our Tree’” on SlideShare
We can all go further faster by working together
Record Hints are Awesome!
• Searches indexed records for you
• Will find records based on all information, including maiden and married names
• Often overcomes errors in records
• Only presents high confidence matches
• 4x increase in sources attached since rollout
Congratulations!
You have just found someone in a record that is not in the tree
Record Hints in the Descendancy View
Search Records Link
• Starting point
• Search section for how to refine
Starting Point for Further Refined Searches
Example Search Refinement
Use Other “Tree” Views
Descendancy View
Fan Chart View
Portrait Pedigree View
Puzzilla.org Can Also Help Find Areas To Work
View Memories of Your Relatives
Scope of Interest
Internal term used to define those persons who will show up in this section of memories and
also in temple opportunities.
The system is showing you persons four generations above you along with their spouses,
children and grandchildren.
Make Your E-mail Public
Use Family History Resources on lds.org
View the main lds.org page for family history at http://www.lds.org/topics/family-history
Get Help With Family History Callings
For training and resources for Family History callings go to http://www.lds.org/callings/temple-and-family-history
Share The “Why” of Family History With Those Not of Our Faith
Share http://mormon.org/family-history with others
Other Useful Tips• Use more than one tab when doing work to keep context
more easily. Using your mouse to middle click will open something in new tab
• Use https://beta.familysearch.org to try out things and see previews of coming features
• There is now a site map for familysearch.org at https://familysearch.org/site-map. I gave a presentation at the 2013 conference that while getting out of date is also a decent site map. See http://www.slideshare.net/bakers84/a-whirlwind-tour-of-family-search-resources-syllabus and http://www.slideshare.net/bakers84/a-whirlwind-tour-of-family-search-resources-presentation for the list of URLs and presentation.
• Many more than time allows
3 Great Myths of Family History
My genealogy is done / There is nothing for me to do
Doing Family History is too hard and time consuming
Family History is for old people
© 2014 by Intellectual Reserve, Inc. All rights reserved
Thank You!
Images Used
• Slide 5 – Screenshot from Family History Department Priesthood Key Indicator report
• Slides 11, 13-26, 28, 30-32 – Screenshots taken from https://familysearch.org
• Slide 27 – Screenshot taken from https://puzzilla.org
• Slide 33-34 – Screenshots taken from http://lds.org
• Slide 35 – Screenshot taken from http://mormon.org