M E R I D I A N     M A G A Z I N E

Accelerate Your Genealogy through Collaboration
 by Chelsea Beattie

In the past, genealogy was a task that required a lot of time, money, and effort by the researcher; however, many new genealogy services can now accelerate the process, find your lost ancestors at a lower cost, and provide more complete and accurate data. New innovations have removed many barriers and made the common excuses for not getting started in the past obsolete.

We have all been given the responsibility to complete our family genealogy. In the April 1999 Annual General Conference Elder Dennis B. Neuenschwander stated in his talk “Bridges and Eternal Keepsakes” that “bridges between generations are not built by accident. Each member of this church has the personal responsibility to be an eternal architect of this bridge for his or her own family.” Doing genealogy research by yourself is a hard task. It becomes easier when we find a relative to collaborate with. Collaboration is a way that we can bind family generations together. Many of the genealogy services available today offer a collaboration feature.

So, what is collaboration? Collaboration is when people work on the same project at the same time, each making changes to the shared data, and finding who made the changes and when the changes were made. Collaboration can be very worthwhile if basic ground rules and common courtesies are followed. The following are some ground rules to follow:

• Before you collaborate with others, organize any information you have already gathered and try validate as much of your own information as possible. Your collaboration will be appreciated by others if you have your own information to bring to the table.
• When collaborating, it is important to know the difference between evidence and conclusions. Instead of entering your conclusions first, look at your evidence and make assertions from the evidence and further assertions on top of those. In the end your evidence should support your conclusions.
• Make sure you have detailed information on how, when, and where you found your information.
• Invite and accept as many individuals as possible to collaborate on your tree. The more people that collaborate on the same family tree, the more accurate your family tree will become.
• Make sure the genealogy program that you use allows you to add, edit, and delete the unwanted information inserted into your family tree
• Always check to see if your information is accurate by going to the original family source
• You will generate better relationships with the people you collaborate with by updating them about new data found

Internet Tools

Because using the Internet is the fastest and cheapest way to collaborate, many use genealogy services currently found on the Internet.  Sharing is mostly done by the transfer of GEDCOMS. Be careful not to just accept the research that has been done by others as your own and never take credit for the research of others. Take the time to contact people who have made research available to make sure you have their latest research. Few things are as frustrating to a researcher as seeing their outdated and incorrect research proliferated by others. Two collaboration programs available today are PAF Insight and OneGreatFamily.  PAF Insight integrates with the resources found at FamilySearch to find matches for individuals in your family tree. You must have a copy of PAF in order to get the most out of PAF Insight. After matches are found, you will still have to perform the matching and merging process within PAF to remove duplication.

OneGreatFamily takes collaboration further by providing a common family tree where everyone can see changes immediately and can see all of the research that is being conducted by others. OneGreatFamily also performs the matching and merging process automatically to remove duplicate information from its database and to constantly provide researchers with as much information as available on their ancestral lines.

One of the promises of OneGreatFamily is that you can meet and collaborate with family from around the world. OneGreatFamily is designed to allow members to communicate and work together to build their family trees. Using the “Collaborate” feature saves you time and effort. OneGreatFamily believes that collaboration is essential to prevent duplication. “We are effectively ending the frustration from the research duplication efforts that have constantly plagued genealogy,” says Alan Eaton, president and founder of OneGreatFamily.

Working on your family tree in OneGreatFamily is by its very nature collaborative. Whether or not you communicate with distant family through email, you are still collaborating every time you use OneGreatFamily. You are adding individuals to the human family tree that will some day result in hints, merges, and collaboration for others who are also using OneGreatFamily. OneGreatFamily helps researchers verify information by providing the names and contact information everyone who provides information on a family tree.

President Gordon B. Hinckley stated, “All our vast family history endeavor is directed to temple work. There is no other purpose for it.” A major concern with Church leaders today related to temple work is duplication. Many times temple work is done, but no one submits the dates to the ancestral files. Many early LDS ancestors have had their ordinance work done as many as 10 times each.

OneGreatFamily, PAF Insight, and other innovative services can help prevent this duplication. PAF Insight helps researchers verify temple ordinance information by matching information with the International Genealogical Index (IGI). OneGreatFamily allows researchers to see a graphical representation of the ordinance information that has been submitted to its service. If the LDS religious preference is active, those whose ordinances have been performed appear in green boxes. Additional, temple sealings are represented by green lines between spouses and parents and their children.  

We are all at different places in our genealogy, but remember that we are all working towards the same goal, and that is temple work. Collaboration is an essential tool that must be used to accelerate this process and help prevent further duplication of efforts.

To learn more about One Great Family, click here.

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