Digitization changes family history, but still need for non-digital
By Aaron Shill
Mormon Times
Published: 2010-05-05 00:18:35
SALT LAKE CITY -- Loretto Szucs was her own search engine back in 1985.
She interviewed relatives. She wrote letters because phone calls and photocopies were too expensive. She rented a microfilm reader, scanned through reel after reel of census records and even enlisted the help of her children -- giving them a quarter for every family name they found.
"A lot of writing, a lot of patience, interviewing anyone who would even know my family," she described.
Today, computer search engines pull family names out of the air.
As Szucs and some of the country's most ardent genealogists gathered in Salt Lake City from April 28 to May 1, Internet connections in and around the Salt Palace Convention Center were buzzing with family history activity.
A lot has changed since the National Genealogical Society last convened its annual conference in Salt Lake City 25 years ago. Online resources have taken years off genealogical research. Researchers, meanwhile, are getting started years earlier.
"They can learn and find in five years what it took me 30," said Jan Alpert, president of NGS.
But be careful not to neglect good old-fashion research methods, she warns.
"If they think it's all on the Internet, they won't find as much as I found."
For longtime genealogists like Alpert and Szucs, family history work began with letter-writing to places like churches and vital records offices -- then waiting for clues. Szucs, now an executive editor for Ancestry.com, got her big break when an order of nuns she wrote to in New York City sent back information about her aunt.
"Then I had a place to start and I could carry on," Szucs said.
That led her to the 1850 census for New York City, made up of 54 reels of microfilm -- each taking three hours to go through.
Barbara Vines Little was a little more fortunate. Her ancestors were from a less metropolitan area in Virginia.
"You were delighted if your ancestors were from the country because then you only had a county to look through -- page by page, and line by line," said Little, NGS board member and past president. "It was a labor-intensive process because you had none of this instant access."
For Little, research often meant leaving town for Salt Lake City, where the LDS Church archives are; Washington, D.C., home of the National Archives; or Ft. Wayne, Ind., which has a large family history library.
"Most people had to wait until they retired before they could do their family history, so they'd have time to travel," Little said. "Today, you can do it with a great deal of ease."
Online databases and search engines have altered the landscape. Szucs' company, Ancestry.com, and FamilySearch, a nonprofit division of The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints, have digitized large volumes of records and made them available on the Internet.
With today's technology, researchers can build online family trees and supplement them with photos and scanned documents. Websites and software offer research helps.
Message boards and social media sites connect researchers.
The "bells and whistles" of technology are appealing to youths, Alpert says. She hopes people become interested in genealogy at a younger age, seek out relatives, and share stories and photographs via e-mail or Facebook -- before they are lost.
"This used to be a gray-hair organization, because you either didn't have time to do (genealogy) until you retired, or you weren't interested in it until you retired," Alpert said. "Now because of the Internet, people can dabble in it with little spare time."
But it's important to realize, the genealogists say, that digitization is an ongoing process and that the bulk of records aren't searchable online.
Szucs once worked at the National Archives and saw stacks of records that "go on and on and on.
"There's a lifetime of digitization to be done," she said.
Vital records, such as birth certificates, are under state jurisdiction, and most aren't digitized -- in part because of privacy concerns.
Genealogists, however, see tremendous progress being made in the digitization effort. Szucs credits a collaborative network that includes commercial and nonprofit efforts; state and county governments; and everything from the Library of Congress to local genealogical societies.
"It's just a beautiful network," she said. "And that's something that I realized even in 1985."
Alpert hopes one other aspect of family history work won't be phased out.
She remembers visiting a tiny town in Ohio and standing in the very church her ancestors once attended. Alpert wants people to recognize the value in going back to the places one came from.
"I hope that doesn't change," she said.
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E-mail: ashill@desnews.com
--
Benicio Samuel Sanchez
Website: http://www.Genealogia.org.mx
Cell Phone (81) 1667-2480
"Haz tu Arbol Genealogico...El Arbol mas Hermoso de la Creacion"
Por medio de la historia familiar descubrimos el árbol más hermoso de la creación: nuestro árbol genealógico. Sus numerosas raíces se remontan a la historia y sus ramas se extienden a través de la eternidad. La historia familiar es la expresión extensiva del amor eterno; nace de la abnegación y provee la oportunidad de asegurarse para siempre una unidad familiar".
(Élder J. Richard Clarke, Liahona julio de 1989, pág.69)
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