Wednesday, May 14, 2008

Genealogy Industry Announcements

It's the first day of the National Genealogical Society conference in Kansas City, and there have been a number of important announcements by the major genealogy database players. They include:

* TGN CEO Tim Sullivan's letter "Ancestry.com Global Content, Product, and Marketing Update - May 14, 2008" by CEO Tim Sullivan was published today here.

* FamilySearch announced today - in "FamilySearch Teams with Footnote.com to Publish Historic Civil War Era Records" - its records access agreement with Footnote.com to publish two significant Civil War Era databases online—the 1860 U.S. Census and Civil War Pensions Index. The two relevant collections will provide free online access to millions of names of individuals from the 1860 to 1865 period in the United States. The completed databases will expand FamilySearch’s growing, free U.S. Census collection online and Footnote’s Civil War Collection. The full announcement is here.

* FamilySearch announced today - in "FamilySearch Engages FamilyLink.com to Add Features to Popular Online Family History Library Catalog" - has teamed with FamilyLink.com, Inc. to improve the user experience of the Family History Library Catalog for millions of people worldwide by adding new Web 2.0 functionality and enhancements. The improvements will also enable users to spend research time more efficiently by directing them to the information that will generate the quickest results.
FamilyLink.com’s improvements to the catalog will make it searchable by major online search engines and allow users to annotate item descriptions—increasing their accuracy and enriching the content. The full announcement is here.

* FamilySearch recently announced - in "FamilySearch Teams With FamilyLink.com, Inc. to Bring German Collection Online " - an inaugural project in concert with FamilyLink.com, Inc., to digitize and index a valuable German genealogy collection containing over 3.5 million names from the period of 1650-1875. The Brenner Collection contains 3.5 million names on more than 750 rolls of microfilm, representing between 900,000 and 1.5 million images. A final count will be determined once all of the records have been indexed. The complete Brenner Collection database is scheduled to be online at WorldVitalRecords.com by the end of this year, although segments of the database will be launched in the interim. The press release is here (but not on FamilySearch!).

If there are more announcements, I will post them here.

Usually, these announcements happen while I am out of town and with limited Internet access. I guess I faked everybody out - I was going to go see my new granddaughter this week but I was too sick to go. I'm sure they planned the NGS Conference knowing about my travel plans. Or not?

1 comment:

Louisiana Genealogy Blogs said...

Have you ever used Family Link? I have had some difficulty with the site. I have had alot of difficulty with the site, in fact. I hope that their assistance at Family Search is different that the experiences that I've had on Family Link.

Louisiana Genealogy Blogs
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