THE ANCESTRY WEBSITE
IN FAMILY HISTORY
CENTRES
©2008 by Donald R. Snow
Sections of the Class Notes
This page was last updated
2008-01-05.
Return to the Hyde Park Family History
Centre Home Page or the Events Page or the Utah Valley Technology and Genealogy Group Home Page or Don's Class Listings Page .
WELCOME AND INTRODUCTION TO CLASS
ANCESTRY -- http://www.ancestry.com
- Ancestry is the largest commercial FH
website (FamilySearch is the largest non-commercial FH website)
- Great resource with all US and UK censuses, many
vital records, civil registration, historic newspapers, immigration records,
World Family Tree pedigrees, and educational information about FH
- Several versions of Ancestry
- Full version Ancestry.com used to be available free
at all FHC's until about May 2007
- AncestryInstitution version http://www.ancestryinstitution.com is now available at the 13 Regional FHC's, including Hyde
Park Family History Centre, since Dec 2007
- AncestryInstitution version (Ancestry Family
History Library Edition) is not as complete as a personal
Ancestry subscription -- doen't include World Family Tree pedigrees, for
example
- These notes are about AncestryInstitution (Ancestry
Family History Library Edition), not the full version
- NOTE: Computer problem at Hyde Park FHC with
AncestryInstitution -- When you click and see A BLANK SCREEN, BUT IT
SAYS DONE (down at the bottom left), CLICK ON THE REFRESH BUTTON to get the screen to
come up -- Refresh button is on the browser toolbar and has two semi-circular
arrows - hover the cursor over the buttons to see their names
TABS ON ANCESTRYINSTITUTION'S HOME PAGE
- Each tab has search fields to fill in and links to
Search Tips and Advanced Search -- It is very worthwhile to look at
the Search Tips helps.
- Also each tab has list of databases on right-hand
side, and a link to List of All Databases at bottom right
- At bottom of each search tab are links to other
Generations Network web sites, including Ancestry.com (Remember that these
notes are for AncestryInstitution -- Ancestry Family History Library
Edition)
- HOME tab -- basic fields to search all their
databases for an individual and the following subtabs
- Historical Records -- censuses, vital records
- Family Trees -- can search by individual or by
parents
- Stories and Publications -- newspapers, obituaries,
historical stories
- Photos and Maps -- photos, historical maps, other
media
- SEARCH tab -- fields to fill in for individual
searches and by record type
- To see only England databases, for example,
click on UK & Ireland, then England
- This then searches only records from England
-
COMMUNITY tab -- Message Boards on topics and locatlities
- LEARNING CENTER tab -- Search The Library - can
search for information by keywords
- Has articles about How-To;s, Geography, Home
Sources, Books and CD's, Magazines, DNA, columns written about FH,
and Ancestry's items for sale
SEARCHING ANCESTRYINSTITUTION
- For an alphabetical list of all of Ancestry's thousands of databases, go to http://ancestry.com/search/rectype/alldblist.aspx
- When doing any Internet search start by just
entering minimal search terms and only add more search
terms to narrow it down if you get too
many hits
- Reason for only minimal terms first is that, if you
enter something slightly different than the database has, you may miss
it entirely
- Do simple searches first by just filling in the
individual's name and basic information -- can do this from the Home page
- More search fields on SEARCH tab and
can select type of records you want to search, e.g. UK records
- Don't need to enter capital letters for the
searches
- Note the 5 stars before each search result -- the
more stars colored in, e.g. 4 out of the 5, shows more likelihood of
that being a good match
- Can set the results at the bottom to show
results of "only 4 stars or higher", for example -- this eliminates the
lower likelihood hits, but may eliminate some that you want
-
Default is Show All Matches
- Hovering the cursor over the link (Show Record or the
result) shows more details and clicking on it opens the
page with more information and options, includingView the Image in
Civil Registration
- When looking for a particular database you may not
know the way Ancestry has it cataloged, so search with variations, e.g. search
for Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints, Mormon, LDS, and even
Utah, to find things related to Mormons
-
For information on general search techniques see
my online notes
Introduction to Internet Genealogy
- Unfortunately, most results pages from
AncestryInstitution don't show the total number of hits, if they continue on
more than one page you don't now how many there will be.
- You can try clicking on the Show 50 Hits (at bottom of screen) and see if it goes on beyond 50.
CENSUSES
CIVIL REGISTRATION
- AncestryInstitution has civil and vital records (births, marriages, deaths) from the U.K., U.S., and Canada, and a few other countries
- Clicking on View Image shows you the image of the record transcribed - usually from
an index of the records, not the original records since most government agencies won't allow indexing of the original records, just access to an index already made
- The Ancestry civil registration search engine is
better and easier to use than other sites like http://www.freebmd.org.uk, for example
- However, if you don't find an entry on one site, try others since
the sources were transcribed by different people and
the indexing may be slightly different on the two sites
- Ancesty includes many vital records
databases for states in the U.S., since such records are kept on the
state level in the U.S.
PRINTING FROM ANCESTRY
- Printing search results of hits
- Clicking on Print usually only prints the first 10 hits, so it may help to leave the number of hits set at 10 before printing.
- Doingnbsp;a Print Preview from the browser to see
what this will look like may show that you only need to print the first page instead
of all pages, so it will not waste paper
- Printing images (censuses, vital records pages,
passenger lists, etc.)
- You can Print, Save, or Share images
- Save images means to copy them to a flash drive,
for example -- click Save and tell it where to save it and what to name it
- Share images means to email them to someone -- can email the image to yourself, for example
- Images usually print better by clicking on Ancestry's Printer icon (top right hand side above the image), rather than browser printer icon
- However, you may need to change the printer
settings to get it to print in landscape mode rather than portait mode, for
example, and this will require going into Printer Setup for the browser
(upper left hand corder under File)
-
Sometimes helps to click on Print Preview under File on
the browser so you can see what the result will look like
before you print it to paper
- Can use a screen capture program to get the image,
if need be
-
PrintScreen (key on upper right hand side of keyboard)
copies entire page to the computer's clipboard
-
Can open WordPad or other program and paste the clipboard
contents in and print from there
- May have to set printer to landscape mode to get the entire document printed
MISCELLANEOUS
- On many screens, but not all (apparently), Enter
works the same as clicking on Search, which is sometimes off the screen and
you have to scroll down to see it
- Differences of between AncestryInstitutional and a person subscription
- All the databases seem to be in both
- Things lacking in AncestryInstitutional -- some of these obviously couldn't be in a version accessible to many people in a FHC setting
- Sections on DNA, testing, and ways to extend your FH using it
- Ways to print your FH information in book form with their system
- Ways of storing information on persons you are looking for, past results and links you've used -- the
- Member connections (others searching same surnames) and message boards you have been searching
- Your personal profile, including surnames and areas of FH you are interested in and a list of other Ancestry researchers searching the same people
- Ancestry Alerts of things you want to be notified of if information becomes available on family trees, message boards, of databases
- Many things on the Learning Center, e.g. videos, ideas, scrapbooking, and "beyond research" helps
- Uploading your information
- Can upload your GEDCOM to RootsWeb, which Ancestry
hosts
- Ancestry will include the data with their World Family Tree pedigrees, but you have complete control over it to edit and/or delete it.
- See Gerhard Ruf's notes on
Where Should I Contribute My Data? for an informative chart of Ancestry.com and other
sites -- can also get to his notes via http://uvtagg.org/ under Class Outlines
- There is a place on the web site where you can subscribe to Ancestry Weekly Journal for emails about what's new at Ancestry -- very informative
- The Ancestry Insider at http://ancestryinsider.blogspot.com/ is
a helpful blog about Ancestry, FamilySearch, and related items.
ASSIGNMENT
- Use Ancestry to do a search for one of your ancestors, your father, even, and see what comes up.
- See which censuses your surname occurs in, both U.S. and U.K..
- Find someone in the U.K. Civil Registration (Jul 1847 - 2005) and see what information
it gives.
Return to the Hyde Park Family History
Centre Home Page or the Events Page or the Utah Valley Technology and Genealogy Group Home Page or Don's Class Listings Page .