Saturday, July 18, 2009

Not-So-Top-Secret FamilySearch Project

I really enjoyed The Ancestry Insider's review of Ron Tanner's talk, at the Utah Valley PAF User's Group meeting, in his post Top Secret FamilySearch Project.

I am not a member of the LDS Church, and therefore am on the "outside" of new FamilySearch and the associated projects at Family Search Labs, except for the ones currently available to everyone. I feel like a kid at the window waiting for the curtain to be drawn back momentarily so I can see what's going on inside. So it's great to see the onion peeled back a bit by those "in the know." It looks to me like Ron Tanner is "in the know!"

Part of Ron's talk dealt with the idea of the Source Centric Open Edit (SCOE) model. The Ancestry Insider noted:

"To set the stage, Tanner asked us what might be the capabilities of an ideal family tree system. He suggested we would ask for (contrast these with NFS, if you will),

"* The ability to easily correct information
* The ability to prove conclusions are accurate with source references and images
* Invite greater peer review and collaboration
* Allow for the evolution of a combined human family pedigree "


All of that sounds like the "online genealogy nirvana" I want to see happen in the "Genealogy in the Cloud" world.

For more information about the Source Centric Open Edit model, take a look at Ron Tanner's presentation, titled "Open Edit and Source Centric User Model for Family History," in PDF format, from the March 2008 BYU Family History and Genealogy Technology Workshop. Very interesting!

Read all of The Ancestry Insider's post, and check out the Ron Tanner presentation. I feel so "on the outside" when I read these things - but then I'm glad that there are excellent minds working to make genealogy things work well in the future.

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