From July 15-17, FamilySearch International and supporting organizations are coordinating the single largest gathering of volunteers online from around the world to help in the noble effort to save, and increase access to, the world’s genealogically significant historical records. With a target of 75,000 online volunteers for the weekend event and a stretch goal of more than 200,000, WE can make a real difference. Remember, every historic record tells the unique story of someone’s ancestor and helps make a personal connection. Until that record is easily discoverable online, that ancestor’s story and their place in the family tree, remains untold.

Please visit https://familysearch.org/worldsrecords for information on the world indexing event and how YOU can participate.

Family Search is back working, I wrote it was a scheduled maintenance that would take Family Search offline for up to 24 hours, but I guess it went better than planned. James Turner wrote a great article on the change.

Great that it is back sooner than expected and that the changes will help all of us with our family trees.

FamilySearch Will Be Down This Monday

The FamilySearch website will be undergoing a technical upgrade Monday, June 27th starting at 12 midnight MDT (6am UTC), and may be down for up to 24 hours as they test the system.

The entire FamilySearch system will be down, including the API that RootsMagic uses to interface with it, so during that time you will be unable to:

1. receive or view WebHints from FamilySearch
2. access FamilySearch to find matches, share data, or otherwise work with FamilySearch from inside RootsMagic.

This is a major upgrade to the FamilySearch back end, but once complete you should not experience any adverse effects in RootsMagic from the change.  We will, however, be closely monitoring the interaction between RootsMagic and FamilySearch once they have completed the upgrade to make sure there are no issues that creep in.

If you do encounter problems with FamilySearch after they have completed the upgrade, give it a couple of days to “shake out”.  If the issues continue after that please let us know the specific details at support@rootsmagic.com.

Have you heard of Kinpoint??  This is a fairly new website that offers you simple-to-use help in filling in missing information and finding more branches of your family tree.

Kinpoint is “family history simplified…. find records for missing information in minutes, not hours…. we’ll work for you, so you aren’t looking for a needle in a haystack…. quickly find and fix problems with your family history.”

How does this work? Kinpoint creates a fan chart with you as the center circle and your ancestors fanning out for as many generations are you want. The information populating this chart comes directly from your Family Search account.  

It’s easy to obtain a FamilySearch account, just log in to www.familysearch.org and create one….. and then upload your tree, in whatever genealogy program you have it, to FamilySearch.

I could go on for paragraphs but you must click to www.kinpoint.com and try it for yourself.

Cost? A “whopping” $2.50 a month………. and if you sign-up really soon that price is locked in for life. Such a deal.

Please do check this out; you will be happy with the results and glad that you took the time. I promise!