7 Helpful Software Tools to use with
Family History Research
Attendees use FamilySearch's Family History mini lab during RootsTech 2012 family history conference in Salt Lake City. by Alex Ramirez, 0f Deseret News, Salt Lake City, Utah.
Mark Mansfield from My-Heritage presented "7 Unique Technologies for Genealogy Discoveries" at RootsTech Thursday at the Salt Palace Convention Center to help users save time and increase success in finding relevant genealogical information.
“Genealogy technologies are meant to save us time,"
Mansfield said. "We're also . . .
Mark Mansfield from My-Heritage presented "7 Unique Technologies for Genealogy Discoveries" at RootsTech Thursday at the Salt Palace Convention Center to help users save time and increase success in finding relevant genealogical information.
“Genealogy technologies are meant to save us time,"
Mansfield said. "We're also . . .
hoping to point you to discoveries you maybe haven’t found on your own.”
MyHeritage is an online genealogy platform that designs software to increase genealogists' success.
Mansfield highlighted seven specific software platforms including smart-matching, record-matching, newspaper-matching, record detective, instant discoveries, search connect and global name translation.
1• Smart-matching is for users who want to graft in branches or entire "trees" of family information. It searches for other family trees containing ancestral matches to one’s personal family tree. According to a study done in December 2015, Mansfield said smart-matching through MyHeritage has an accuracy rate of 97.6 percent.
2• Record-matching finds records that are likely those of a person's ancestors, such as obituaries, and gives researchers the ability to connect them to a personal database.
3• Newspaper-matching is a tool used to help fill in the blanks when converting newspaper writing to a current digital text. Mansfield said as times the text can become garbled. MyHeritage has enlisted linguists who have helped build software that predictably fills in those errors.
4• Record detective fuses smart-matching and record-matching.
5• Instant discoveries is a software that helps those who would like to build their tree quickly, so that they can go back and verify their information later.
6• Search connect archives searches from sites that didn’t bring forth results and connects them to searches other people have done on the same information. It aims to connect those two people in hopes of helping them work together toward the right information.
7• Global name translation bridges the gap between the variances of names, especially in different languages.
“Our focus on internationalization is something that I think is a core strength in what we do,” Mansfield said.
This software broadens the scope of a researcher's potential ancestors by including common variances in names as relevant to one’s search for his or her ancestors.
“It’s worth a try,” Mansfield said. “There’s lot of offerings to sort of get your feet wet, to judge what the value is and see what works.”
MyHeritage is an online genealogy platform that designs software to increase genealogists' success.
Mansfield highlighted seven specific software platforms including smart-matching, record-matching, newspaper-matching, record detective, instant discoveries, search connect and global name translation.
1• Smart-matching is for users who want to graft in branches or entire "trees" of family information. It searches for other family trees containing ancestral matches to one’s personal family tree. According to a study done in December 2015, Mansfield said smart-matching through MyHeritage has an accuracy rate of 97.6 percent.
2• Record-matching finds records that are likely those of a person's ancestors, such as obituaries, and gives researchers the ability to connect them to a personal database.
3• Newspaper-matching is a tool used to help fill in the blanks when converting newspaper writing to a current digital text. Mansfield said as times the text can become garbled. MyHeritage has enlisted linguists who have helped build software that predictably fills in those errors.
4• Record detective fuses smart-matching and record-matching.
5• Instant discoveries is a software that helps those who would like to build their tree quickly, so that they can go back and verify their information later.
6• Search connect archives searches from sites that didn’t bring forth results and connects them to searches other people have done on the same information. It aims to connect those two people in hopes of helping them work together toward the right information.
7• Global name translation bridges the gap between the variances of names, especially in different languages.
“Our focus on internationalization is something that I think is a core strength in what we do,” Mansfield said.
This software broadens the scope of a researcher's potential ancestors by including common variances in names as relevant to one’s search for his or her ancestors.
“It’s worth a try,” Mansfield said. “There’s lot of offerings to sort of get your feet wet, to judge what the value is and see what works.”