The New Familysearch.org
By Angelo Coniglio
Continuing the review of the LDS Church site https://familysearch.org/ (familysearch); if you have not used the site recently, it may appear to be different to you. The above link will take you to a colorful, if ‘busy’ page with a variety of options. My advice is that if you are not already registered, click “Sign in”, then “Create Account”. Follow the directions to register for free, then return to https://familysearch.org/ and sign in. You’ll see several choices, briefly explained below.
At the top of the page
In the top line, clicking “Volunteer”: Will allow you to volunteer in the LDS indexing project, helping to transcribe information from original records into on-line indices that allow others to search records by name; or you can make monetary donations; or volunteer to evaluate features of the LDS site.
“Get Help” lets you contact the site in various ways.
In the second line, the “Family Tree” link leads you to a page that lets you start with yourself, and add family members to build a family tree (which I will hereafter call the FamilySearch Family Tree). Unless you have genealogy experience, I strongly advise beginners against using this feature. Your information will go into a data base that is available to and can be added to or changed by all users of this feature of the site, the majority of which are LDS church members who may the service in developing their trees for ‘church ordinances’ dealing with the LDS religion. Wait until you have developed more of your own ‘tree’ before searching here.
The “Photos” link will allow insertion of photos to your FamilySearch Family Tree. Again, I don’t advise this until you are more experienced.
The site gives advisories about the “ownership” of material you may enter in your tree, including “By submitting content to FamilySearch, you grant FamilySearch an unrestricted, fully paid-up, royalty-free, worldwide, and perpetual license to use any and all information, content, and other materials . . . that you submit or otherwise provide to this site (including, without limitation, genealogical data and discussions and data relating to deceased persons) for any and all purposes, in any and all manners, and in any and all forms of media that we, in our sole discretion, deem appropriate for the furtherance of our mission to promote family history and genealogical research. As part of this license, you give us permission to copy, publicly display, transmit, broadcast, and otherwise distribute your Contributed Data throughout the world, by any means we deem appropriate (electronic or otherwise, including the Internet). You also understand and agree that as part of this license, we have the right to create derivative works from your Contributed Data by combining all or a portion of it with that of other contributors or by otherwise modifying your Contributed Data.
I advise that you read and fully understand the consequences of uploading information to the FamilySearch Family Tree, so that you can make an informed decision as to whether you want to do so. Further, any family researcher should realize that once information, family photos, images of family documents and so on are posted on familysearch or on ANY on-line venue, they are essentially there forever, available for others to view, copy, and use in ways you may not approve of.
Familysearch provides invaluable resources and information, for free, for researchers of genealogy and family history. I must strongly point out that registering on and using https://familysearch.org/ familysearch in NO way obligates anyone to submit his/her family information or photos to the site. Regardless of the FamilySearch Family Tree feature, nothing I have said should discourage you from using this very valuable site, wisely, in your research.
The third link on the second line is “Search”, the link I use the most, and will discuss in coming issues.
Coniglio is the author of the book The Lady of the Wheel, inspired by his Sicilian research. Order the paperback or the Kindle version at http://bit.ly/SicilianStory. Coniglio’s web page at http://bit.ly/AFCGen has helpul hints on genealogic research. If you have genealogy questions, or would like him to lecture to your club or group, e-mail genealogytips@aol.com.
