12 Genealogy Things You Need to Know This Morning, Thursday, 6 Feb 2014

2/6/2014

Today's Things

FamilySearch announced last night at their Media Dinner they will be making billions of obituaries searchable online for free on their website. [Are you using FamilySearch.org for your research?] In order to do this, they will need the help of volunteers in their indexing program. Speaking of which, they also announced a new indexing software that will be browser-based and access to it will be from the main FamilySearch.org website. Thus, it will match in design with their site. [Coming soon.]
FamilySearch also announced last night LDS members will have at-home free access to Ancestry.com, findmypast.com, and MyHeritage while the general public would have free access to these commercial sites at Family History Centers ~ all made possible with their strategic partnerships with these commercial sites. [And this is not available yet but will be sometime later this year.]
On Irish Genealogy News, Claire reports a significant price increase for Findmypast's international sites.

Findmypast.com [US] has added PERSI to their online collections.
Interested in what happened yesterday in some of the Innovator Summit sessions at Rootstech? Check out Genealogy's Star and Ancestories.
And on Genea-Musings, Randy shows you exactly what a successful day at the Family History Library looks like.
Here are finalists of the Rootstech Developer Challenge. Winner will be announced on Friday. [Very interesting technology tools! So take a look at each one's website.]
Yesterday, the NGS announced a new online course - Guide to Documentation and Source Citation. [You should check out the other online courses they provide and consider becoming a member as a discount on these courses is a member benefit. However, you do not have to be a member to take the course.]
Ancestry.com added a new database for England to their online collections yesterday.
USGenWeb volunteer contributors uploaded 131 files of records and information for various counties in the following US states: California, Florida, Georgia, Illinois, Louisiana, Michigan, North Carolina, Virginia, and Wisconsin.
New technology to look at from Rootstech: Trunx, AncestorCloud, and StoryLava.
And don't forget to watch the live streams from Rootstech and keep up with pics, blog posts, and news from Rootstech on the RebelMouse Page I created.