Originally posted by Robert Givens on: September 02, 2008, 08:34:12 AM

FamilySearch is the Church’s main Family History Site and that will not change. All these other sites are temporary site locations for new applications which will be developed to be added to the FamilySearch site once they are ready for full release. Many of these sites are available in limited release or access is being allowed while the sites are being prepared to be added to FamilySearch.

new.FamilySeach: This is a temporary site location for two application, Family Tree and the online Temple Ready application. These programs are in limited release to some Temple Districts. Once these programs are completed they will be added to FamilySearch and the new.FamilySearch site will be discontinued.

FamilySearch Labs is a place where you can go to see new applications and new versions of existing applications which are being developed and will someday be added to FamilySearch. They let us use the programs while they are being developed and encourage us to provide feedback to help develop the applications to meet our needs.

The FamilyTree program that you see at FSLabs is the new version of newFamilySearch that is under development. FamilyTree is the upcoming view that users will get when they log into Me and My Ancestors.

The RecordSearch program you see at FSLabs has already been added to FamilySearch as Record Search Pilot. Record Search is the application which allows us to search the databases created in the FamilySearch Indexing program.

The FamilySearch Indexing program was developed at FSLabs and has now been added to FamilySearch. The FS Indexing program is a project to extract all the microfilms from the Family History Library and make them available online through the Record Search application.

The FamilySearch Research Wiki and the FamilySearch Research Forums will be added to FamilySearch once they are ready. They are being developed to provide research assistance in doing Family History.

FamilySearch Archives is a new application which has been added to FamilySearch. This is a project to digitize all the books at the Family History Library and family history books from other major libraries and make them available online at FamilySearch. It is being hosted for FamilySearch by BYU, you can access those books which have already been scanned and digitized from the search menu at FamilySearch.

If you want to find out more about the technology applications of the Church you can go to http://tech.lds.org/index.php.

(This was written by Gary Turner at the FHCNET mail group I belong to.)

Originally posted by Robert Givens on: March 04, 2008, 12:27:00 AM

On March 3, 2008 the following changes were made (among others in an attempt to make nfs more functional for users):

1) Choose the Information to Display for an Individual
For deceased individuals, users can choose the name, gender, birth, christening, death, and burial information to display in the individual summary. Users, not the system, now choose the common view. These conditions apply:

Users decide which information is displayed.
Only the last change of data is preserved.
All users will see the same summary. The name in the summary will also be displayed in the pedigree.
Users can contact the last person to change summary information if that person gave contact information.
To change individual summary information:

Click the Me and My Ancestors tab.
In the Family Pedigree with Details view, go to the family tree, and click the individual you want to see.
In the Details page at the bottom of the screen, click Summary. This will show the current display.
To change displayed information, click the arrow to the right of it. Then from the information listed, click the information you want displayed. If the correct information is not listed, click the Add another . . . link at the bottom of the page to add the correct information and its source.

2) Choose Which Parents or Spouse to Keep on Display
Now when you choose which set of parents or which spouse you want displayed in your family tree, the system will keep that choice until you change it.

To choose which parents or spouse to display, follow these steps:

In the Family Pedigree with Details view, to see duplicate spouses, fathers, or mothers, click one of the following symbols:
See other parents symbol
See other spouses symbol
From the list of spouses or parents shown, click the one you want displayed.
Click the box marked with one of the following:
Always show the selected parents on my family tree.
Always show the selected spouse on my family tree.
Click the Continue button.

There are others – they are found on the home page of nfs under “What’s New”
Bob

Originally posted by Robert Givens on: February 25, 2008, 10:52:24 PM

Your first visit to newFamilySearch can be daunting to say the least. Those of you who are younger will probably pick it up quickly. Those of us who are a little more mature might need a few visits to get a hang of it.

On your first visit please do take advantage of the introduction program they offer you. The web site also has a good data base of help articles.

When you go to Me and My Ancestors you should expect to NOT find much ancestry connected to you, if anything. Living people – even your parents if living – don’t show up for privacy sake. Trust me – the Carters are all in there, you just need to connect them in.

Do not, do not, do not add in a GEDCOM of all your data. This will just cause more duplications to clean up. Once you can tap into the family already in the nfs database, it will all be connected.

Your first job would be to add the names of your parents – if living, don’t even bother with their birth date. The name is all you need. If your grandparents are deceased and were members or have had temple work done for them – try adding them from the data base rather than adding them in as new people. Once they are connected the rest of the family going back should be there. If not try finding the next generation back until you get the family to come up.

If this information isn’t clear just email me or add a comment here.
Bob Givens

Originally posted by Robert Givens on: February 15, 2008, 09:13:12 PM

The newFamilySearch website was mainly created to simplify temple submissions and to eliminate duplications in temple submissions. Essentially they took the IGI, Ancestral File, Pedigree Resource File, and all church membership records and combined them into one data base. The program did some combining but it will be up to us to bring all this duplicate data together so that each person who is in the data base has a single folder where everything about them is placed. (Like all the duplicates.)

There is a steep learning curve to learn it but it really is outstanding and getting better all the time. In fact a new upgrade with several good improvements is due out in by the end of the month.

Just to give you an idea of the problem of combining. When I first went on I checked on William Furlsbury Carter – my direct ancestor. In real life he was married 5 times and had 47 children. When I first started working on him – he was in the system some 40+ times, had 70 or so spouses, and children in the hundreds. Obviously a lot of combining was needed. We have him down to one person and after a month of working on it, I have his first wife’s family (Sarah York) cleaned up. I go through that one. I will let cousins clean up the other families.

I do a lot of research and have some PA German lines of my mother’s that no one is working on. Since this program has rolled out to our temple district (Fresno California) I have submitted about 100 families of data. It is so much easier than the TempleReady program.

Questions? I will be happy to accomodate you.
Bob