Random Notes from the FGS Conference

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Here are a few ran­dom notes from the FGS Con­fer­ence in Knoxville, Ten­nessee.

  • Root­sTech Con­fer­ence: Just pri­or to the com­mence­ment of the FGS Con­fer­ence, Fam­il­y­Search announced the Root­sTech Con­fer­ence:

    “Tech­nol­o­gists and geneal­o­gists from around the world will gath­er at the first annu­al Root­sTech Con­fer­ence in Salt Lake City, Utah, Feb­ru­ary 10–12, 2011. The new con­fer­ence, host­ed by Fam­il­y­Search and spon­sored by lead­ing genealog­i­cal orga­ni­za­tions, aims to bring tech­nol­o­gists and geneal­o­gists togeth­er to help deep­en under­stand­ing of cur­rent tech­nolo­gies and dis­cov­er new ideas in apply­ing tech­nol­o­gy to geneal­o­gy. Learn more at rootstech.familysearch.org.”

  • Fam­il­y­Search dig­i­ti­za­tion con­tin­ues to deliv­er records from the Fam­il­y­Search vaults, with most of the index­ing done by vol­un­teers. At the time of the NGS Con­fer­ence in May, they announced 300 mil­lion names. In August, they have announced that anoth­er 200 mil­lion names have gone online. The results of this work can be seen at http://beta.familysearch.org/, and by the end of the year should replace the old­er site at www.familysearch.org/.
  • Fam­il­y­Search Wiki (http://wiki.familysearch.org/) now con­tains more than 40,000 arti­cles, many writ­ten col­lab­o­ra­tive­ly by vol­un­teers.
  • The New Eng­land His­toric Genealog­i­cal Soci­ety (NEHGS) has launched a new web­site, AmericanAncestors.org. The site name reflects the fact that while the NEHGS has a focus on New Eng­land, they have also devel­oped sub­stan­tial data­base hold­ings nation­al­ly, espe­cial­ly in New York, the mid-Atlantic, and in eth­nic top­ics such as Irish and African Amer­i­can research. The new site con­tains all of the NEHGS’s data­bas­es., fea­tures, arti­cles, and resources, and have a very con­tem­po­rary feel about it, with the lat­est in social media inte­gra­tion and blog­ging and inter­ac­tion with users on the site.
  • The Fed­er­a­tion of Genealog­i­cal Soci­eties (FGS) is part­ner­ing with the Nation­al Archives to dig­i­tize the War of 1812 pen­sions. Three sam­ple pen­sions, as well as infor­ma­tion on donat­ing for this project are avail­able at www.fgs.org/1812/.

It has been a great con­fer­ence, and there has been a lot of excite­ment in the air.