Alan E. Mann, A.G.

alan.familyhistory@gmail.com Accredited Genealogist

BYU 2007 Annual Family History & Genealogy conference www.alanmann.com/articles

Friday, 3 August 2007 11:00 am - 12:00

Applying Geographic Tools

to our Family History Data

Geography can be a genealogist’s best friend. Understanding the geography leads to understanding jurisdictions, which helps locate records. It also can assist or suggest a direction for research. http://freepages.genealogy.rootsweb.com/~genmaps/ and http://geonames.usgs.gov/pls/gnispublic/ are great examples of geography resources online. As good as they are, they are merely great reference tools where you can look up the desired information. Another good tool, is the England Jurisdiction project from the Family History Library. It has tremendously valuable data, but is still just data. An early application that attempts to make this data more useable can be seen at www.familysearch.org/eng/Library/FHL/frameset_library.asp?PAGE=english_probate_jurisdictions.asp . As good as this is, we need to apply some imagination to think of what else could be done with this data.

The future of such a project might be to enter a place name, a family name, and a rough time period. The program would then identify the place, find records from that place or other places nearby, search those records for the name supplied, and return the information from the records. This would be possible if the location data were geocoded and the records themselves were indexed (both of which are do-able now…)

Several efforts are currently underway to capture video data and make it available interactively. This could have significant impact on many aspects of our lives. Here are some examples:

· Google Street View allows you to see 360° images from street level for those areas that have been photographed with the panoramic camera. This is a recent addition after the Google Traffic maps. See both at maps.google.com, or see a short intro video at http://maps.google.com/help/maps/streetview/.

· http://preview.local.live.com/ walk or drive down the street and see what you would see if you were actually in the position and facing in the direction shown.

· EveryScape is a mapping utility that plans to interface with stores, offices, businesses, museums, etc. See a demo using Union Square at www.everyscape.com. This service plans to let you virtually window shop and get information on the products you see without having to interact with a sales person (although one is instantly available, if you need one…)

· Earthmine plans to “mine” the earth with video. It is done by a van passing down the street, capturing video, but may soon be done by video drones. This site also allows tags (some automatic, some added by customers, reviewers, or owners). It takes it a step beyond Google Street View. See www.earthmine.com.

So, why should this excite a genealogist and what does it have to do with family history? How about a virtual tour of the place where you or an ancestor was born—done without leaving home? How about a virtual visit to a cemetery to see what it says on your ancestor’s headstone?

Reading a headstone may seem farfetched, but it is NOT impossible. I believe it will happen. What if basic imagery like what you see from Google is readily available for free, but higher resolution imagery (enough to read a headstone, for example) required a fee? Or perhaps you could rent a video drone and control it via the Internet, having it visit the cemetery and zoom in on the headstone you wanted to see? Not science fiction, just an idea which is still a few years away (five or maybe ten?).

But this is only the beginning.

Another technology combines wireless communication with GPS (Global Positioning System). One service that takes advantage of this is Earthcomber at www.earthcomber.com. Right now, it works with a cell phone. The service locates you (your phone does not have to have GPS—it uses GPS in the cell phone towers), then offers you local services similar to what you would have on the web. Right now, digital cameras with GPS also mark you photos with where they were taken—embedded in the saved digital photo itself. Thus, you could have a photo your relative took of a location, then have a web-based service tell you through your cell phone which way to walk to get to the spot where that photo was taken.

Microsoft Surface also has application to geospatial relationships. I presented on this technology earlier in this conference (see article on technology in this syllabus). Experts predict that most surfaces will eventually become computer input and display devices—including walls, etc. Can you imagine walking down the street and stopping to ask a telephone pole for directions?

Wireless communication opens other possibilities. What if we stored our genealogy on our PDA or smart phone? Then, these devices could communicate with other devices nearby wirelesses. They could compare genealogies without sharing actual private data. Genealogical application would include:

· Mark a spot with your cell phone, and tag it. You and anyone else can then return to that spot and know where it is (useful for headstones, where pictures were taken, family historical locations, etc.)

· Walking down the street and your PDA/smart phone beeps. The screen displays a message—that lady approaching you is your second cousin three times removed on the Kuykendall side…

· Sitting the in the Family History Center and a message appears on your laptop screen. The older gentleman sitting eight feet to your left is working on the Larraby line in Massachusetts in 1720. Would you like me to let him know you are working on the same line?

Mashups

A mashup (web application hybrid) is a website or web application that combines content from more than one source (courtesy Wikipedia). Thus one can take a geotagged genealogical record database in one source (or on one website), and mash it up with maps on a web site which has nothing to do with the genealogical database. A popular mashup we can use as an example (but which has nothing to do with genealogy) is Zillow, which pulls information from sites about real estate sales, and presents that information on a map from a different site. The result is a map which shows individual homes with their value. It has nothing to do with family history, but it illustrates the idea – see www.zillow.com.

Provo Labs is an exciting new company in the genealogy community. Their first major offering is WorldVitalRecords.com. At this site, you can search data that has been tagged with geographic locations. This mashes up with Yahoo! maps to display markers on a map represented by the data. You search the database, get results, click on a result of interest, and get a map of the area showing the area where the event took place. Social Security Death Index, Maine death index, and Louisiana slave index are the first databases they have geocoded.

The Foundation for Online Genealogy is another new company in the genealogy community. Their first product is WeRelate.org, a cooperative site that seeks to enhance good tools through individual participation in the improvement process. At this site, you can search names, places, or sources and then map them through a Google maps mashup. The mapping portion is only visible when doing a sources search at www.werelate.org/wiki/WeRelate:Sources. They have drawn information from a variety of sources, including the Family History Library Catalog. Try a source search for a state or country and enter a record type into the keywords field. Once you’ve found a record for a place, you can edit the results to add additional valuable information, which will then be available to future visitors to the WeRelate site. It’s an interesting idea, with a lot of potential for the future.

Goldbug’s SiteFinder (www.goldbug.com/map/sitefinder.html) asks you to input a place name. It then locates the place and plots it on Google Maps in a basic mashup. Goldbug is well known for Animap Plus, a software program which animates the changing boundaries for each county of the 48 states from colonial times to the present. For an example of what an Animap animation looks like, check out www.tngenweb.org/maps/county-ani/tn-maps/tn-cf.html. A list of other states’ AniMap animations available online is found at http://genealogyinc.com/map_county.html.

A more simple application of geography to genealogy is trip planning. One idea is to use Google, Yahoo, or Ask Maps to plot out key points you want to visit, which will aid in trip planning. You can also use software such as FamilyAtlas to plot your data on a map, then look at places you might want to stop or things you might want to research at archives or libraries in the area. One example is Kimberly Powell’s genealogy trip at http://maps.google.com/maps/ms?f=q&hl=en&q=%2B38%C2%B0+34'+24.00%22,+-109%C2%B0+32'+57.00%22&layer=&ie=UTF8&om=1&msa=0&msid=112175121695916852526.00000113401e815c4fefe&ll=35.835629,-77.975464&spn=1.567541,2.883911&z=9.

Other useful mapping sites include

· http://home.earthlink.net/~dcreeves2000/data/gen_map_dr_web.htm and

· www.mapyourancestors.com/

How to Find More

To keep up with some of the exciting things happening in the world of technology as it applies to geography, try

· www.webware.com/8300-1_109-2-0.html (see category for mapping) and

· www.programmableweb.com/tag/mapping.

You might also follow blogs, such as

· http://googlemapsmania.blogspot.com,

· http://gis-geoblog.blogspot.com/, and

· http://googlemapsapi.blogspot.com.

©Copyright 2006-7 by Alan E. Mann. All rights reserved. Written permission to reproduce all or part of this syllabus material in any format, including photocopying, data retrieval, or the Internet, must be secured in advance from the copyright holder.