Tuesday, October 12, 2010

FamilySearch Beta has a new look - Post 3: Getting Started

In the first post of this series last week, I noted that the FamilySearch Beta site looked different. Over on the right-hand side of the home page are images for the "Getting Started," "How To" and "FamilySearch Centers:"



When you click on the "Getting Started" image or link, you are taken to this page:



This page has three main areas - the "View famous records," "Print your family tree" and "Step-by-Step Videos" (coming soon). 
 
The "View famous records" link leads to a series of web pages for several famous people - the one I picked was Irving Berlin, which looked like this (two screens):
 


Isn't that interesting?  A "Life Sketch" (you can read more by clicking on the "Read more" link) and some record images (a passport application, and 1910, 1920 and 1930 census records).

Is this a glimpse of "Life Sketches" for every person in the soon-to-be-accessible FamilySearch Family Tree?  Will registered FamilySearch users (not necessarily LDS church members) be able to edit and contribute to these pages?  Or will FamilySearch use Footnote Pages, or something similar, to permit any researcher to contribute events, notes, documents, images and links?

The "Print Your Family Tree" area has six background images for pedigree charts.  When you click on one of them, you get a PDF file (3 to 5 mb size) that you can print out and fill in four generations by hand. 

The "Step-by-step videos" area says "Coming soon" - perhaps they will tie these videos into a step-by-step genealogy research series.

1 comment:

James Tanner said...

Hi,
FamilySearch already has an extensive series of research videos. They can be viewed on the older FamilySearch.org website under Free Online Classes. They have a detailed research series and many other valuable resources. Thanks for your posts. Always interesting.