Service Charges
MyFamily.com’s latest subscription service has ruffled feathers in genealogy circles—particularly those of some genealogists who’ve submitted family tree files to free MyFamily.com-owned online pedigree databases. The company’s Web sites include Ancestry.com (http://www.ancestry.com), Genealogy.com (http://www.genealogy.com) and RootsWeb.com (http://rootsweb.com).
OneWorldTree, Ancestry.com’s new fee-based search engine, links together all of Ancestry.com’s records and information about an ancestor. Essentially, its appeal lies in finding and combining probable matches for you, so you don’t have to weed through multiple databases and irrelevant results.
The OneWorldTree service has drawn genealogists’ ire because it taps family tree data that thousands of family historians supplied—in the spirit of collaboration—to Ancestry World Tree (http://www.ancestry.com/trees/awt/main.htm). And plans are under way to add RootsWeb WorldConnect Project (http://worldconnect.rootsweb.com) files to the service. That's the main source of genealogists' concern over OneWorldTree, because of RootsWeb's origins as a free, grassroots resource.
After MyFamily.com acquired RootsWeb in June 2000, the company merged WorldConnect’s and Ancestry World Tree’s family tree files into a single database that’s grown to 325 million names. Genealogists can search the mega-database for free at both sites.
Some genealogists are questioning MyFamily.com’s use of this data as part of a paid-access service. During the OneWorldTree preview period, which began in late April and ends June 21, a 14-month OneWorldTree subscription costs $49.95 ($39.95 for Ancestry.com US Data Collection subscribers) at http://www.ancestry.com/search/rectype/trees/owt.
Word of OneWorldTree’s debut spread quickly on e-mail lists and message boards, in some cases inspiring postings such as this one at GenSuck.com (http://www.gensuck.com): "The dangerous part [of] what is happening here, is the precedent that Ancestry.com is setting. They are taking donated information that was understood to be ‘forever free’ and making a subscription out of it. What will be their next harvest? The cemetery inscriptions [at] USGenWeb, just because they are hosted on Ancestry’s site?" (RootsWeb hosts the all-volunteer USGenWeb project at http://www.usgenweb.com.)
When it acquired RootsWeb, MyFamily.com issued a press release promising that "the RootsWeb.com site will continue to be free to all users."
"That’s still true," says MyFamily.com spokeswoman Mary-Kay Evans. Family trees submitted to both Ancestry World Tree and RootsWeb WorldConnect will remain searchable for free in their present form. "What your subscription to OneWorldTree will be paying for is convenience." OneWorldTree is a search engine rather than a database, she explains. "OneWorldTree stitches together trees that are likely to include [your ancestor]."
MyFamily.com vice president of products Gary Gibbs gives this example: "I have an ancestor Owen Pratt, born in 1811. A search for him in WorldConnect turns up something like 150 results. In OneWorldTree, I get one result. Inside of that, it shows all that information aggregated together in tree form, similar to a pedigree form. Each individual has a page." To view records from Ancestry.com’s subscription collections, you’ll need an Ancestry.com subscription.
Trees submitted through RootsWeb WorldConnect aren’t yet included in OneWorldTree search results. "WorldConnect files will be included in the future," Evans says, but according to Gibbs, "it’s not at the top of the list."
Computerized filters keep user-submitted trees with obvious errors—too few dates, parents born after their children and the like—out of search results. Still, Evans says, MyFamily.com can’t guarantee the reliability of the trees OneWorldTree turns up.
Evans adds that submitters agree to allow MyFamily.com to incorporate their information into products—both free and fee-based—like OneWorldTree. The RootsWeb user agreement states that submitters grant MyFamily.com "a limited license to the Content to use, host and distribute that Content and allow hosting and distribution on co-branded Services of that Content." (Read the form in full at http://www.rootsweb.com/rootsweb/aup.html.)
RootsWeb’s pre-acquisition user agreement (no longer online except in RootsWeb message board archives), dated June 1999, gave RootsWeb license to redistribute postings—but it also specified that "material written and posted by an individual may not be harvested for commercial or other use, except with the permission of that individual or as permitted by Fair Use." RootsWeb creator Brian Leverich says this statement was intended to prevent unrelated entities from downloading RootsWeb’s files and reselling them.
If you’ve contributed to RootsWeb WorldConnect or Ancestry WorldTree and don’t want your information included in OneWorldTree searches, you have until May 21 to remove it—but that will delete it from the free Ancestry World Tree and RootsWeb World Connect databases, too. Follow the Deleting a Tree You’ve Submitted link at http://trees.ancestry.com/owt/checklist.aspx.
Leverich hopes submitters won’t do that. "I believe OneWorldTree has the potential for significantly advancing the state of the art in online genealogical research. It would be almost unthinkable, and surely a great loss to the genealogical community, to exclude RootsWeb’s resources from a tool with this potential."
MyFamily.com hasn’t noticed a significant number of people removing their files, Evans says. She predicts that "in the near future, more and more people will understand what OneWorldTree does with linking records, and there will be much less concern."
Legendary Launch
Genealogy software maker Pearl Street Software plans to launch a new records database called Family Tree Legends Records Collection, available at http://www.familytreelegends.com/records. A subscription to the collection costs $19.95 until its June debut; thereafter a subscription will cost $29.95. Subscribers don’t need Family Tree Legends genealogy software.
The collection, which contains 400 million names, spans the 1600s to mid-1900s and includes birth, marriage and death indexes from most states; military records; land records; court and probate records; biographies; cemetery transcriptions; and digitized books. Pearl Street Software president Cliff Shaw says the records will come from more than 1,000 data sets—including some unavailable through other subscription Web sites—and he’ll release a list of the databases soon.
Online market conditions inspired Shaw to launch the records collection. "Our main goal is to make our service as user-friendly and powerful as possible, while remaining very affordable," Shaw says. "We're going to bring value back to the genealogy market. MyFamily[.com] is not being challenged, and their services have gotten too expensive as a result." MyFamily.com owns major subscription database Web sites including Ancestry.com (http://www.ancestry.com) and Genealogy.com (http://www.genealogy.com).
"We're also going to compete with how we treat our customers," adds Shaw. "When a customer of ours wants to cancel, it's going to be a simple e-mail to our support desk.…I believe in treating customers with the utmost respect and in building strong relationships with our user base."
Some Ancestry.com and Genealogy.com customers have reported problems with the company’s automatic renewal system, which requires subscribers to call the company within a specified period of time to unsubscribe. Family Tree Legends Records Collection also will use automatic renewal, but "you can cancel the auto-renew at any time," Shaw says.
MyFamily.com claims more than 1.5 million paid subscribers to its sites. "We spend an enormous amount of time and energy trying to keep our customers happy. We’re striving every day to continue to do that," says spokeswoman Mary-Kay Evans.
After Pearl Street Software announced the new records collection last week, charter subscriptions outsold Family Tree Legends software by 20 to 1. Shaw plans to continue developing that software; his free GenCircles pedigree database site (http://www.gencircles.com) also will continue to be available.
FHL Rearranges Resources
Planning a summer vacation to visit the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints Family History Library (FHL; http://www.familysearch.org) in Salt Lake City? Library renovations might affect your research plans. Expect these changes:
• The family history and biography books have been relocated from the nearby Joseph Smith Memorial Building to the FHL, but they’ll move again to their permanent home on the third floor in September.
• The US and Canada book collection, which also is being moved to the third floor, will be unavailable between mid-June and mid-August.
• The Family Group Records Archive of LDS church members' and FHL patrons' family group sheets is now on microfilm only, rather than in binders of paper copies.
• The international book collection is in storage; make requests at the International Library attendant window.
• Special Collections, which focuses on LDS church members, closed in April and will reopen in June. Until then, you can inquire about microfilm from that collection at the main-floor or second-floor reference desk.
In exchange for any inconvenience, you’ll find more computer workstations, a computer training area and more research space. Before your visit, call the FHL public affairs office at (801) 240-3499 or (800) 346-6044 Ext. 3499 for renovation updates.
Be a Do-Gooder
Having trouble tracking down those elusive ancestors? In this biweekly, Web-exclusive column, contributing editor Nancy Hendrickson points to new and helpful ways to do your computer-related genealogy research. This week, she writes about genealogical volunteering opportunities. Read more at http://www.familytreemagazine.com/specialoffers.asp?FAMancestorcurrent. Hendrickson is a family historian, freelance writer and the author of the book Finding Your Roots Online, on sale now at http://www.familytreemagazine.com/store/display.asp?id=70583.
Browse the archive of her AncestorNews columns at http://www.familytreemagazine.com/specialoffers.asp?FAMancestorarchive.
Google Your Family
"You can use an Internet search engine like Google (http://www.google.com) to find vital records online. Search on terms such as vital records, birth records, marriage records, divorce records or death records; along with the name of a county or state (or both, if the county name is a common one). You also could search on the name of a town, especially if it’s a town in New England. For example, you’d search on marriage records Spotsylvania for marriage records in Spotsylvania County, Va."
Excerpted from Plugging Into Your Past by Rick Crume (Family Tree Books, $19.99), available for purchase at http://www.familytreemagazine.com/store/display.asp?id=70624.
You could win this book! If you have a great idea for discovering, preserving or celebrating family history, e-mail your tip to mailto:ftmnews-editor@fwpubs.com with "TIP OF THE WEEK" in the subject line. If we publish it, you'll win a free copy of Plugging Into Your Past.
Be first to check out these new articles on our Web site:
Building A History
Q. I live in Dallas and my grandparents Lizzie and Ruben Unterman owned a tailor shop in Manhattan, New York City, probably in the 1940s and '50s. Where might I be able to find pictures of this shop?
A. I’d start with the New York Public Library (NYPL). A portion of its photo collection is online at http://digital.nypl.org. The rest of the material is available through the library’s photographic archive at http://www.nypl.org/research/chss/spe/art/photo/photo.html. While chances are slim that you’d locate an image with your grandparents’ tailor shop as the subject, it’s more likely you’ll find the shop in the background of a street scene. If you’re not certain about the street address for their business, consult New York City directories or phone books (available at most larger public and genealogy libraries) to find one. You also can hire an NYPL researcher through the library’s NYPL Express service. See http://www.nypl.org/express for information.
To look for photos, blueprints and other information on New York City buildings, follow the tips at How to Research a New York City Building on the Columbia University Avery Architecture and Fine Arts Library Web site. Go to http://www.columbia.edu/cu/lweb/indiv/avery/nycbuild.html.
You also can check online photo databases such as Dead Fred (http://deadfred.com). Search the database by surname, and if you can prove a photo belongs to your family, you’ll receive it for the cost of postage.
—Maureen A. Taylor
Maureen A. Taylor is the author of Scrapbooking Your Family History (Betterway Books, $24.99, available from http://www.familytreemagazine.com/store/display.asp?id=70633). Her next book, Identifying Your Family Photographs, is due out in fall 2005 from Family Tree Books.
Read more Q&A with the experts at http://www.familytreemagazine.com/nowwhatonline/previous.html.
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A Missing Link?
Expert photo historian Maureen A. Taylor helps readers analyze old family pictures in her Web-exclusive column Identifying Family Photographs. This week, she tries to connect a reader's family to the subject of a mystery image. http://www.familytreemagazine.com/specialoffers.asp?FAMcurrentphotos If you have a family photo mystery for Taylor to solve, check out our Submission Guidelines at http://www.familytreemagazine.com/specialoffers.asp?FAMphotosubmission
Lynnfield, Mass.
Maureen A. Taylor
May 15
Essex Society of Genealogists
Topic:
Visit http://www.esog.org.
Sacramento, Calif.
National Genealogical Society Conference
May 19-22
Visit the National Genealogical Society Web site at http://www.ngsgenealogy.org.
Sharon DeBartolo Carmack
Topics:
- Before You Publish: What Every Genealogist Needs to Know About Copyright, Fair Use, and Getting Permissions
- From Italy to America: Starting Your Italian Genealogical Research
Paula Stuart Warren
Topics:
- Railroad Records and Railroad History: Methods for Tracking
- Found: One Ancestral Address, the Poor Farm
James W. Warren
Topics:
- Research for Treasures in State Archives
- Writing Your Family History in Small, Manageable Pieces
The Woodlands, Texas
Emily Anne Croom
May 27
Barnes and Noble, 1201 Lake Woodlands Drive
Topic:
Contact Alicia Johnson at (281) 465-8747 or mailto:CRM2616@bn.com.
Find out about more upcoming speaking engagements and family history experts at http://www.familytreemagazine.com/specialoffers.asp?FAMspeakers.
GenSmarts Automated Genealogy Research - "amazingly easy and convenient" says Family Tree Magazine. Get a free trial copy at
http://www.GenSmarts.com
Genealogy Hotel Rates in Salt Lake-You will love the genealogy rates at the Holiday Inn-Downtown along with the free shuttles to & from the Family History Library. http://www.holiday-inn.com/slc-downtown
RootsMagic Genealogy Software - "An excellent choice for any genealogist" says Family Tree Magazine. Get a free trial copy at
http://www.RootsMagic.com
UNIQUE SCANDINAVIAN HERITAGE TOURS
Visit ancestral villages, parish churches, archives, connect with family.
Fluent guides and genealogy experts included.
http://www.scandgen.com
CookBook Maker™ 2000 helps you make a family food heritage by using easy to follow templates for typing is recipes and printing your heritage cookbook.
http://www.CookBook-Maker.com
PUBLISH YOUR FAMILY HISTORY. Preserve and share your precious family research. Personal coaching. Many options.
http://www.GatewayPress.com
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