Sunday, March 15, 2009

Lifting the Skirt on Genseek.com


We are getting a little more advance publicity and information about http://www.genseek.com/ - the site "coming soon" to be:

"We think GenSeek will become the world’s largest gateway to family history content,” explained Steve Nickle, President [of FamilyLink.com]. “Combined with our family social networks, it will make it easier than ever before for family members to explore and share their heritage with all of their relatives. Our historic partnership with FamilySearch Catalog will enable us to launch GenSeek.com with links to millions of the world’s most valuable genealogy sources.” (from a press release, see it at Leland's GenealogyBlog here.)

I posted over a month ago about this site in A Sneak Peek at Genseek.com which had a link to Tamura Jones's article about the site with screen shots.

I listened to Lisa Louise Cooke's Genealogy Gems Podcast #61 today while writing a blog post (multi-tasking!) and heard her interview Steve Nickle, President of FamilyLink.com. My takeaways from the interview:

* http://www.genseek.com/ will be released in about two months, perhaps late May.

* FamilyLink.com has a five year agreement with FamilySearch to publish FHL sources online.

* There are 4.5 million sources in the Family History Library Catalog. These will all be online at Genseek.com.

* If "customers" find a source of interest, they could sponsor digitization of that source through Genseek.com.

* "Customers" of Genseek.com may provide "sources" of genealogy information to Genseek.com

* Genseek.com will provide links to digitized data providers, e.g. FamilySearch, Ancestry, WorldVitalRecords, etc.

* Genseek.com will be a hub, a starting place for genealogy research on the Internet.

* Users will be able to comment on the sources and information in the sources.

* GenSeek.com will be FREE to users.

Please go listen to the whole interview (it starts at about "1850" on the little meter on the podcast icon (below the Genealogy Gems Podcast picture on the right sidebar. You have to click the Play button (>) to play the podcast). I hope that I got all of that right! Thank you, Lisa, for the excellent interview on an important genealogy issue.

I think that http://www.genseek.com/ has the potential to be the best thing for the genealogy world since, well, Ancestry.com (I know some would debate that! At least I didn't say Genea-Musings, or EOGN, or Facebook). A web site where all of the genealogy sources are listed (can there ever be "all" of anything listed?) with links to the records (assuming the user has an account with the repository) sounds like a winner.

Will FamilyLink.com launch Genseek.com at the NGS Conference in Raleigh NC in early May?

FamilyLink.com has bitten into a big apple here. I hope that they succeed in bringing Genseek (and their other beta product, WorldHistory.com, too) to a successful launch.

UPDATED 10 p.m.: corrected small typos and added formatting.

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