February 21, 2014
By Steve Anderson
BillionGraves and MyHeritage recently announced that they are working in collaboration to bring about the digitization of the world’s cemeteries. This new arrangement will result in tens of millions of family historians and genealogists from around the world working together to digitally capture and preserve images of cemetery tombstones, record their GPS locations and create valuable new indexes of these images. These two companies will work together to make the BillionGraves website and app available in 25 languages. To read more about this new collaborative agreement, click on "read more" below. . . .
By Steve Anderson
BillionGraves and MyHeritage recently announced that they are working in collaboration to bring about the digitization of the world’s cemeteries. This new arrangement will result in tens of millions of family historians and genealogists from around the world working together to digitally capture and preserve images of cemetery tombstones, record their GPS locations and create valuable new indexes of these images. These two companies will work together to make the BillionGraves website and app available in 25 languages. To read more about this new collaborative agreement, click on "read more" below. . . .
In this collaboration, MyHeritage calls upon its tens of millions of users along with millions of other family history enthusiasts around the world to work with BillionGraves to digitally preserve cemeteries around the world and capture their GPS locations.
BillionGraves and MyHeritage will work together to make the BillionGraves website and application available in 25 languages. Along with other features, the BillionGraves app and website will also support Gregorian, Hebrew and Julian dates. The addition of these features makes the BillionGraves app the first of its kind to be made available to the entire world.
The BillionGraves content is available for free on MyHeritage SuperSearch. In addition, MyHeritage is matching it for free to its 27 million family trees on MyHeritage and Geni.
BillionGraves and MyHeritage will work together to make the BillionGraves website and application available in 25 languages. Along with other features, the BillionGraves app and website will also support Gregorian, Hebrew and Julian dates. The addition of these features makes the BillionGraves app the first of its kind to be made available to the entire world.
The BillionGraves content is available for free on MyHeritage SuperSearch. In addition, MyHeritage is matching it for free to its 27 million family trees on MyHeritage and Geni.
MyHeritage and BillionGraves join forces to digitally preserve the world’s cemeteries We're excited to announce that MyHeritage has teamed up with BillionGraves to launch a global crowdsourcing initiative to digitally preserve the world’s cemeteries.
Gravestones can play a very important role in genealogy. They provide vital information such as the person’s name, the names of close relatives and dates of birth and death. They often describe the deceased’s character and personality, providing a glimpse into the person’s life. However, billions of gravestones in thousands of cemeteries worldwide have never been documented nor has their information been made available online.
In addition, time is chipping away at the gravestones and many are becoming unreadable over the years. Age and exposure to the element means that what is written on the stone eventually fades, making it harder and sometimes impossible to read them to know who has been buried in that particular site.
Today we have the necessary tools; it is up to our generation to preserve these headstones and store their valuable information online for the future.
BillionGraves is a one-of-a-kind application, available for both iOS and Android, which uses patent-pending technology to enable users to photograph and document gravestones. With the help of MyHeritage, the app will be available in 25 languages and support Gregorian, Hebrew and Julian dates. It records the GPS locations of gravestones to make them easy to find so that volunteers can easily see which areas of any cemetery remain undocumented, to maximize efficiency and avoid duplication. The gravestone photographs are then transcribed by volunteers on the BillionGraves website, resulting in searchable digital data.
In just two years, BillionGraves has already amassed millions of headstone records, uploaded by 70,000 volunteers.
Gravestones can play a very important role in genealogy. They provide vital information such as the person’s name, the names of close relatives and dates of birth and death. They often describe the deceased’s character and personality, providing a glimpse into the person’s life. However, billions of gravestones in thousands of cemeteries worldwide have never been documented nor has their information been made available online.
In addition, time is chipping away at the gravestones and many are becoming unreadable over the years. Age and exposure to the element means that what is written on the stone eventually fades, making it harder and sometimes impossible to read them to know who has been buried in that particular site.
Today we have the necessary tools; it is up to our generation to preserve these headstones and store their valuable information online for the future.
BillionGraves is a one-of-a-kind application, available for both iOS and Android, which uses patent-pending technology to enable users to photograph and document gravestones. With the help of MyHeritage, the app will be available in 25 languages and support Gregorian, Hebrew and Julian dates. It records the GPS locations of gravestones to make them easy to find so that volunteers can easily see which areas of any cemetery remain undocumented, to maximize efficiency and avoid duplication. The gravestone photographs are then transcribed by volunteers on the BillionGraves website, resulting in searchable digital data.
In just two years, BillionGraves has already amassed millions of headstone records, uploaded by 70,000 volunteers.
Starting immediately, we’ll be reaching out to the users of MyHeritage and encouraging them to join us in using BillionGraves to preserve and document gravestones worldwide - for future generations. The records will be available for free on BillionGraves’ website, and MyHeritage's search engine for historical records, SuperSearch. Each record will contain photographs of the gravestone, GPS coordinates, and an index of corresponding information.
A mapped out gravestone record on the BillionGraves application.
MyHeritage Record Matching technology will be unleashed on the new records and users will automatically receive notifications of any new cemetery records that match individuals in their family tree. Users can save new cemetery records and extract relevant information directly to their family tree, helping them discover vital details about relatives and find out more about their ancestors.
This global initiative is a great way for MyHeritage users to contribute to the future of family history research, and to help preserve their own family legacies, as well as the legacies of others. Through our partnership with BillionGraves, MyHeritage continues to add additional digitized global content, providing enormous value to millions of users.
We'll be posting more details soon about how you can participate in this global mission and help preserve the information today, for the generations to come.
The MyHeritage team
Visit the BillionGraves blog or visit the MyHeritage blog site for more information.
A mapped out gravestone record on the BillionGraves application.
MyHeritage Record Matching technology will be unleashed on the new records and users will automatically receive notifications of any new cemetery records that match individuals in their family tree. Users can save new cemetery records and extract relevant information directly to their family tree, helping them discover vital details about relatives and find out more about their ancestors.
This global initiative is a great way for MyHeritage users to contribute to the future of family history research, and to help preserve their own family legacies, as well as the legacies of others. Through our partnership with BillionGraves, MyHeritage continues to add additional digitized global content, providing enormous value to millions of users.
We'll be posting more details soon about how you can participate in this global mission and help preserve the information today, for the generations to come.
The MyHeritage team
Visit the BillionGraves blog or visit the MyHeritage blog site for more information.
