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The Ancestry Insider
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The unofficial, unauthorized view of the big genealogy websites. Ancestry.com and FamilySearch.org aren't the best communicators, leaving a need for the Ancestry Insider. The Insider reports on, defends, and constructively criticizes these organizations.
Recent Posts Tagged With 'ancestry.com'
Free, For a Limited Time
It’s belated news, but in case you haven’t already seen these free offers, read on: Holocaust Collection Free Through End of Year I received the following from Footnote.com. I wanted to provide you an update on our Holocaust Collection.&...
Tim Sullivan Rings Opening Bell
Thursday morning, Tim Sullivan, the CEO of Ancestry.com, rang the opening bell to start trading on the NASDAQ stock exchange. See a video of the event. (You must be a member of Facebook to view the video.) Here's a few shots from the video: A...
News Ketchup: Today\'s the Day
Modification of an image © 2005, The Facey Family Some rights reserved. It’s time for a little news ketchup! Today’s the Ancestry.com IPO Yesterday, Ancestry.com announced the pricing of its IPO at $13.50 per share. And today i...
Ancestry.com Goes Public This Week
Plans seem to be proceeding for Ancestry.com to go public this week. Renaissance Capital has selected Ancestry.com as its featured IPO for the week. You can read more here and here. Yesterday Ancestry.com filed a Form 8-A which I assume officially ...
Don’t Stop at the Index
Last time, I pointed out a couple of databases on Ancestry.com from the FamilySearch Western Europe Vital Records Index: Database Language Size Published Updated Spain, Albacete Province,...
Ancestry.com Posts FamilySearch Microfilm
I continue to see evidence of improved relations between Ancestry.com and FamilySearch. Last week, an intriguing title caught my eye in the list of new Ancestry.com databases: Thesaurus antiquitatum et historiarum Italiae, Vols. 1-4 (in Italian) ...
Vote for Your Fav 40
Fresh from their successful 101 Best Web Sites awards, Family Tree Magazine is now sponsoring a contest to honor your favorite 40 genealogy blogs. Here’s how it will work: The magazine staff has sifted through the blogs you nominated (see item 7 i...
My Video Interview with Lisa Louise Cooke
At the recent Salt Lake Family History Expo I had the pleasure of sitting down with Lisa Louise Cook, producer and host of Genealogy Gems podcasts. Little did I realize that not only does Lisa do audio podcasts, she does video podcasts! Oops! Yes, ...
Drouin Collection Returns and Respect the Fonz
Arthur “The Fonz” Fonzarelli Credit: D.J. Concert Productions Ancestry.com and the Drouin Genealogical Institute have reached an agreement that returns availability of the Drouin Collection to Ancestry.com today, according to Dick Eas...
Labor Day News Ketchup
Modification of an image © 2005, The Facey Family Some rights reserved. I’m way behind on FamilySearch and Ancestry.com news stories. To ketchup, here’s several news items. Ancestry.com held a 3rd Bloggers Summit during last week...
The End of the Roll
I recently received this comment from MikeF in response to my coverage of David Rencher’s BYU keynote. Dear Insider, I have a question that I don't think has been addressed, although perhaps I missed it here or in other posts. This is about ...
Whence the Drouin Collection?
Dear Ancestry Insider, One of our patrons noticed that the Drouin Collection is no longer on AncestryLibraryEdition. Do you have any information as to what has happened to this useful Canadian database? Thank you, Annewhite T. Fuller ...
What’s New at Ancestry.com?
This article is one in a series of session reports from the recent BYU Conference on Family History and Genealogy. I tweeted the session live, but I hate to send you to Twitter to read them because they appear there in reverse chronological order. I...
Ancestry.com Going Public
Dick Eastman broke the news Monday evening that Ancestry.com is going public. They have filed Form S-1, their initial public offering (IPO) registration statement with the Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC). The number of shares and offering p...
Ancestry.com Catch-up
The conference last week has thrown me off my groove. There’ve been important updates at Ancestry.com that I need to tell you about in case you depend on me for your Ancestry.com news. As I’m behind, I’ll draw from the company’s press release...
It’s Not Stonehenge Nor The Generations Network
You’ll recall last week I posted this picture and asked where you thought it might be: You may even recall the hint: This magnificent circle of stones is located next to a highway. Looking for a genealogical-world tie-in? The highway ...
Ancestry.com Releases “Expert Connect”
I must admit to being so busy keeping up with the news of FamilySearch’s New FamilySearch, that I’ve neglected taking time out to learn about a new service from Ancestry.com. However, Expert Connect is too important a development to let the anno...
More FamilySearch and Ancestry.com bloggers
Last time I told you about a couple of blogs by FamilySearch employees. Today, I’ve got a couple of Ancestry.com employee spouse blogs. I was also going to share another FamilySearch employee blog, but decided the author revealed too much personal ...
Ancestry.com California Death Index
I recently received this e-mail from one of my readers: Hi! Been reading about the Ancestry.com search and the frustrations therein. Thought I'd send along a great example. Looking for Fredrick Murphy, born 1902 and died in California. If y...
Name counts for Newspapers
Last Friday I was excited to see Ancestry.com had added a whole lot of new newspapers to its collection. I took especial notice of the Bozeman Daily Chronicle of Bozeman, Montana and immediately checked it out. You’ll be happy to know that if you...
New features coming to FamilySearch Indexing
Tuesday, 26 May 2009, FamilySearch announced that new features were coming to FamilySearch Indexing. Friday, they announced a delay in the downtime previously scheduled for 1 June 2009. New features in FamilySearch Indexing Several new features a...
Ancestry.com Passes 8 Billion Records
Scientists and computer users use metric prefixes in which k means a thousand and M means a million. A few isolated groups, such as the energy industry, used the Roman numeral M for one thousand long before the metric system came along. For a million...
Acronym glossary?
I recently received this request: Dear Mr. Insider: I have a modest suggestion. Although I'm pretty familiar with genealogy terminology, I was stumped for a while about the meaning of FOR in your "Rollout" legend. Can ...
Louisiana Slave Records, 1719-1820, The Review
An aborted earlier attempt to review this database turned into an editorial on titles. This was followed by an introduction to this database and now, today’s results of the review. Ancestry.com’s efforts to rehabilitate their presentation of this...
Louisiana Slave Records, 1719-1820, An Introduction
Gwendolyn Midlo Hall compiled the Afro-Louisiana History and Genealogy databases Image Credit: http://www.gmhwebsite.com/ Years ago I discovered a small database on Ancestry.com and immediately fell in love with it. At the time, it was ...
The Ancestry Family History Center Edition
Some Family History Centers (FHCs) don’t know that all FHCs can have free access to the Ancestry Family History Center Edition of Ancestry.com. Some FamilySearch employees don’t know that their computers at work have free access to the Ancestry ...
Outage, Outstanding, Outsourced, FamilySearch Indexing
Service Outage The FamilySearch Indexing service experienced a major disruption last week. Tuesday morning volunteers were having problems downloading or submitting batches, and the projects tab did not show any projects. By Wednesday, volunteers r...
New site features coming to Ancestry.com
Monday night Ancestry.com broadcast a "town meeting" attended by about a thousand people. Mike Ward, Ancestry.com PR guy conducted the session. Tim Sullivan, CEO spoke first, followed by Andrew Wait, Senior Vice President over Ancestry.com;...
Afro-Louisiana History and Genealogy, 1718-1820
Elizabeth Shown Mills' latest QuickSheet, Citing Ancestry.com Databases & Images, illustrates a basic citation template using the "Afro-Louisiana History and Genealogy, 1718-1820 (Slave)" database. Unfortunately, a search of the Ancestr...
Some Ancestry.com and FamilySearch Videos
Here's a couple of videos to alert you about. The first is called, "Family History - made simple" and is a product of StuffMadeSimple, an official FamilySearch affiliate. Another is an Ancestry.com commercial posted by GenealogiaTV...
