Discuss the benefits
and the drawbacks of Online Family Trees like Family Tree and Ancestry Tree and
Personal Family Tree Software like Roots Magic, Ancestral Quest or Legacy. Can
we use just one or the other? Why or why not?
Re: Online
Family Trees. I have
quite a bit of experience with FamilySearch Family Tree and its predecessor New
Family Search. I have IOUS’s in my ancestry, individuals of unusual size, and
this has been very frustrating. There have been some “pedigree wars” with one
branch of my family, where someone would change Henry Rollins to John Porter
Rollins and then someone else would change it back and then the other person or
persons would reverse the change and back and forth. It has been actually kind
of funny, like the good fairies in Sleeping
Beauty changing Aurora’s dress from pink to blue and back again. Even with
all the frustration I have experienced with these FamilySearch products I am
thankful that we have them available. They are constantly getting better and
are great for collaborating with others.
I also have limited experience with family
trees on Ancestry.com and MyHeritage.com. I think I would like to discuss
MyHeritage.com for this assignment.
A year ago I attended
RootsTech and we were offered a free six-month membership My Heritage in
exchange for submitting a GEDCOM file. So I submitted my father’s large GEDCOM
file and got my free membership. I renewed the subscription after the
six-months, so I have had it about a year. The motto of My Heritage is “Do your
genealogy while you sleep” because the program is constantly comparing your
tree to other trees and advising you when there are record matches or new
information. I get frequent emails advising of new matches. My father had over
400 first cousins (because of polygamy) and this generation has mostly died
off. Many of the matches are advising me of obituaries or Find a Grave or
Billion Grave records matching the names in my father’s GEDCOM. So My Heritage
has essentially updated the GEDCOM file. I still need to enter the information,
the sources and citations into my own record, however.
I think that online
trees are wonderful for preliminary research. They are a good first place to
look. The family trees are particularly valuable if they have sources. Just
last Sunday my daughter-in-law asked me how to research one of her
ancestors. All she knew was the name. So
we looked online. Searches on both FamilySearch Family Tree and in Ancestry.com
Family Tree led us to several census records, a civil war record and a
photograph. So now she knows a lot more about this individual and she has leads
to research and to verify in Iowa, Ohio, Illinois and Virginia
Re:
Personal Family Tree Software. I have had the most experience with Legacy because I won the software
a few years ago on a radio show. I recently purchased the updated version
Legacy 8.0. It has many nice features. When I was doing the assignment about
using census records as sources I went to Legacy to print out blank census
forms and used them to complete the assignment. It was very handy. However,
Legacy is probably more complicated to use than some of the others. I have had
some experience with Ancestral Quest and probably it is the best for those
people who are transitioning from using PAF (Personal Ancestral File). And I
have been learning RootsMagic in this class, of course.
I definitely believe
that we need to use both online family
trees and personal software. I cringed when I heard about someone who threw
away all their personal family records because “now it is all on New Family
Search!” Things do not stay the same at
the FamilySearch family trees. Others can and do make changes and sometimes
things are lost. Never put any information or photos or stories or documents on
FamilySearch without keeping your own files. The other online trees are not
subject to being changed as much by others, but these other web sites might not
be permanent and data could also be lost. Another drawback to online trees
might be the loss of privacy. And someone could copy your information and
publish it as their own work. Do not put anything on the Internet if you do not
want to give away the rights to it. You will have to weigh the benefits of
sharing against the possibility of plagiarism. And in the interest of accuracy
you might not want to “publish” information on the Internet until you are sure
it is reasonably correct information. It is very valuable to keep your records
in personal software on your computer, so you can work with it and use it to
help you as you make discoveries and develop conclusions.
No comments:
Post a Comment