Family Tree: “Photos” Changed to “Memories” in Main Navigation

The FamilySearch site has had a couple of significant changes in the last couple of days.

“Photos” Changed to “Memories” in Main Navigation

It is now official: the “Photos” section of the site has been renamed to “Memories.” Our site currently allows users to add 3 types of memories: photos, stories, and documents.

If you click “Memories,” that page has been altered somewhat to reflect the new wording:

This planned change was announced on the FamilySearch blog last a few days ago 

(https://familysearch.org/blog/en/photos-feature-called-memories/).

If you click “Memories,” that page has been altered somewhat to reflect the new wording:

In Family Tree, where it used used to say “Photos,” it now also uses “Memories.” Here’s the summary card:

On the details page, the “Photos and Documents” tab is now “Memories.” The page has three sections, one for each memory type. The sections can be opened and closed, and links for adding new memories located directly under the title of the section.

Improved Sitewide Navigation

If you hover your mouse over each item in the header, you now get options that you can use to quickly get to a specific place within that section of the site.

This change was announced on the blog last November (https://familysearch.org/blog/en/change-to-site-wide-navigation-coming/).

Some Family Tree Watch List Improvements Just Went Live

The Watch List in Family Tree is now part of a larger lists feature. This new lists feature lets you sort and filter your lists so you can focus the list on what you are looking for. This new lists feature also provides a framework that the Family Tree development team can use to build more useful lists that we can use in the future.To see the new Lists feature, go to Family Tree, and click Lists.From there, you can see two lists.

·         People I’m Watching. This is what was formerly called the “Watch List.” It is a simple list of all the people in Family Tree you’re watching for changes. This list should now load more quickly than it did in the past. When it first appears, the list is sorted alphabetically by the last or family name of the person being watched.

·         Changes to People I’m Watching (beta). This is a new list. It shows you all of the changes made in the last 30 days to people you are watching. When it first appears, the list will be sorted by the date when the last change was made, starting with the most recent changes.

This list may take a little while longer to load, so it will be labelled as “beta” feature for a while after its release.

Sorting Lists

Use the column headings to sort the list.

If a particular column has only one sorting option, click the column heading itself. Click the heading again to reverse the sort order.

If a column has more than one sort option, you see a little triangle. Click the triangle, and click the sort order you want.

Green highlighting and an arrow tell you how the list is currently sorted.

Filtering Your Lists

Sometimes you want to be able to focus your list according to any of the text that shows up in the list, such as a particular surname or other information. To do that, just enter the text that you want to filter by in the Filter box, which is located at the top of your list:

Have You Downloaded The RootsTech App Yet?

This will be my 3rd RootsTech and am I excited! Notice there was no question mark, rather an explanation point.

It's time to download their app. Schedules are in it. Information on the vendors are there. Keynotes are identified.

They have done a great job with the app. Use it to decide if you even want to attend. Of course you do want to attend, this will just cement that thought. There are classes for all levels of skills. There are classes for the beginning youth.

The venue is bigger this year, the classrooms are larger. I used the app last year to make last minute changes of plans on which classes to go to. Some filled up so fast I needed a back up plan. A couple of classes weren't what I expected and my app was ready with an alternative class to move over to.

It's great - RootsTech, and the app is great too.

Using Digital Newspapers In Research; Library of Congress Chronicling America: Updated

 

Yesterday was the 3rd Saturday and it was Saturday Seminar day at The Riverton Family History Library. The keynote was great, an hour presentation on photos and stories by Devin Ashby who is a project manager for FamilySearch. He has some great ideas and terrific instruction.

Following the keynote, were two 1 1/4 hour breakout sessions. There are four classes to choose from. Kathleen anxious to learn how to use her MAC better took a class on MAC Tricks from Jimmy Zimmrman. She loved the class.

I took a class taught by Ron Ray, who currently maintains an awesome website for research links: http://eaglequestpro.com/share 

As is typical to these classes and even those at events such as Rootstech, the handouts are as valuable as the lecture.

I have to say that as much as I love genealogy I usually come out of seminars and conferences on fire. Yesterday was no exception. The focus of this article is on newspapers as taught by Ron. In another post I will write on the topic of "Beginning Guide to tracing Irish Ancestry taught by Jessica Taylor of Ancestry.com, which was the second break out class I took.

OK now, putting into action the newspapers class. 

I will start by going to Library of Congress Chronicling America website. http://chroniclingamerica'loc.gov/ Here you can explore historic newspaper pages from 1836-1922.

At first I am going to search for CRAGUN and see what they have. Yikes, 1733 pages on Cragun. This should be interesting and keep me busy for awhile.

I think I will publish this now and share more with you later - I have research to do..

What I am expecting is to find interesting information, perhaps information on people previously lost or unknown to me.

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I just have to update this post. Yesterday I reviewed about 16 articles. They were the first Craguns to appear and were on some of my great grandfathers brothers. It was just so interesting. One brother had his finger shot off by armed robbers. I wonder what finger it was and how they picked which one to remove; and why. (humor here). Another article was about how one of his brothers was sued by another for unduly influencing their mother to sign a will naming the sued brother as the sole heir. The article claimed the will  was done the day before their mom died, and that she was not capable of making a sound decision. Now, I didn't think things like that happened in our family. (more humor)

What was also interesting, was that almost none of the people I have so far come across had any or much sourcing done in FamilyTree. Since they are so closely related, and since basic sourcing is so smoothly done in FamilyTree I probably added about 200 sources to the tree yesterday. I even found a few relatives not attached to the tree.

I learned more about our family, it was a fun few hours yesterday. All of this from one website with 1733 pages of newspaper articles on Cragun, and having read only about a dozen of those articles. (I did attach photo copies of all of these articles to FamilyTree.) I used the snipping tool that is part of Windows to make a copy to my desktop and then uploaded that to the persons sources section on their person page. Where the article was about more than one person I also hit the attach to source box button and then went to each individual mentioned and added it as a source from the source box. Again, this is a smooth and easy process.

PS: the two stories I mention here weren't the only interesting stories, just the most dramatic. These old newspapers are really quite fun.