Tuesday, March 19, 2013

Record Matching Progress on MyHeritage.com

I wrote fairly extensively last September about the MyHeritage Record Matching feature - see:

*  MyHeritage Releases Record Matching Technology (19 September 2012)

*  First Look at Record Matches on MyHeritage (19 September 2012)

*  Using MyHeritage Record Matches to Find Find-A-Grave Entries (20 September 2012)

*  NewspaperARCHIVES Records in MyHeritage Record Matches (26 September 2012)


*  Finished Using MyHeritage Record Matching for SSDI Matches (20 December 2012)

Since then, I have continued methodically going through the matches found on the MyHeritage search engine, one block at a time for several of the record collections available, and adding content and source citations to my genealogy database in RootsMagic. 

Here is the top of my Record Matches page in MyHeritage showing only the Pending items (I have already confirmed many matches, and rejected some that were not correct) on the "By Collections" tab:



There are 28 collections with 12,057 Pending record matches on the list. The Top 10 collections with Pending matches are:

1.  WikiTree -  10,611 matches - I haven't started these, mainly because they are almost all my own data from the family tree that I uploaded to WikiTree.com some time ago.

2.  Newspaper Archive - I have 584 pending matches to review, and have confirmed 130 matches and rejected 268 matches out of a total of 982.

3.  Find A Grave - I have 264 pending matches to review, and have confirmed 1,062 matches and rejected 19 matches.  This is my primary area of current review and has been since December (I've reviewed 634 matches in four months).

4.  Maximilian Family Tree - 161 pending matches to review.  I haven't looked at this resource to any great extent.

5.  California Deaths, 1940-1997 - I have 101 pending matches to review, have confirmed 137 and rejected 2 matches.  I will finish this collection after I finish with Find A Grave.

6.  1940 United States Census - I have 61 pending matches to review, and haven't started on them yet.

7.  Texas Births, 1926-1995 - I have 56 pending matches to review, and haven't started on them yet.

8.  England & Wales Deaths, GRO Indexes, 1970-2007 - I have 54 pending matches to review, and haven't started on them yet.

9.  Interment.net - I have 52 pending matches, and haven't started on them yet.

10.  Texas Marriages and Divorces - I have 38 pending matches, and haven't started on them yet.

I noticed that MyHeritage has another tab on the Record Matches page, called "By People" - here is the top of this list:


The top person on this list has 101 record matches - almost all of them are in the Newspaper Archive collection.  Herbert Innerasky is in my database (the husband of a distant cousin), and he is in many issues of the Fitchburg (Mass.) Sentinel newspaper.

The second person, Garrett Branisel, is a distant cousin of mine who is featured in many recent editions of the Chicago Herald newspaper.

Further down the list are record matches for many of my ancestors, but more often siblings of my ancestors.

I hope to finish at least the Find A Grave, California Death Index, Interment.net, Texas Deaths, Texas Marriages and the 1940 Census record matches by the end of the summer.

I really like this Record Matching feature on MyHeritage because it helps me FOCUS on one record collection as I add content to my genealogy database.  It has been very helpful to my effort to update my database with additional dates, places and source citations.

The accuracy level in the record databases (like Find A Grave, SSDI, etc.) is very good - better than 98% if the SSDI and Find A Grave are any indication - I'm actually surprised when I find one to be rejected.  The newspaper match record is not so good because there is usually only a name without some other corroborating data like a birth or death date or spouse's name.  I have found many newspaper articles for persons in my database, and have transcribed the information into my person notes in my database.

However, I have three issues:

1)  I don't believe that the Record Matches for the different record collections have been updated since September 2012.  I know that about 6 million entries have been added to Find A Grave since then, and I don't see that the total number of my record matches for Find A Grave has changed.

2)  I need to update my MyHeritage tree so that it can find Record Matches for the 1,600 persons I've added to my genealogy database since I uploaded my tree to MyHeritage in 2011.  Will MyHeritage come up with a synchronization between the Family Tree Builder software, and the MyHeritage online tree?  I would have to merge my bigger tree into the smaller tree and eliminate duplicate persons in Family Tree Builder, I think.  I don't want to upload the new tree and start all over with all of the Record Matches.

3)  Record Matching is only as good as the number of Record Collections available to match tree persons with.  Has MyHeritage/WorldVitalRecords added many new record collections since September 2012?  And what record collections are going to be added in the near future?

I'll speak to the MyHeritage folks at RootsTech 2013 and see what they have to say about these three issues.

The URL for this post is:  http://www.geneamusings.com/2013/03/record-matching-progress-on.html

Copyright (c) 2013, Randall J. Seaver

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