Notes from a talk given by Jake Gehring at the Utah Valley Technology and Genealogy Group, February 14, 1998
Jake's address is 934 E 300 S, Provo UT 84606, and his E-mail is RootsSeekr@aol.com. He prefers E-mail to telephone calls.
Jake says he favors local users groups. He thinks they can sometimes be more valuable than conferences because their help is nearby and on-going, while conferences are once-a-year affairs where you may be given so much information at once that you have difficulty assimilating it.
Emerging Trends
- New programming techniques, like Java and ActiveX
- New genealogical CD-ROMs. He has two boxes that hold 60
CDs each. They are nearly full.
- NGS has created a set of standards for genealogical
technology. They have not publicized them. The stress is
that the computer must be the tool, not the end in itself.
Copies of the guidlines were distributed.
- US GenWeb- Since the Fall of 96, A project whereby every
county in the US creates a Web Site giving information about
the genealogical resources that are available and how to
access them. The project is slowing down somewhat, probably
because those counties with internet-savvy and motivated
volunteers are already set up. Utah still needs volunteers
for Daggett, Duchesne, Iron, Kane, Paiute, Rich, Sevier,
Wasatch, and Wayne counties. See www.usgenweb.com.
- GENTECH 98 (just held in Allen County, home of PERSI) and
99, which will be held in Salt Lake City. Volunteers will be
needed, as well as our attendance support. A call for papers
has been issued and they are due by March 15th 1998. Topics
will include Emerging Technology, Electronic Publishing, and
even classes for beginners. There will be a competition for
the Gentech Applied Technology Gallery, featuring such
things as winning Web sites. Jake has some URLs of winners.
- The SOUNDEX code is proving to be inadequate now that
research has extended to so many countries. New methods are
replacing it.
Benefits of ActiveX Controls
Microsoft's technology. For the universal and routine tasks every program requires it is now possible for programmers to use already existing code modules rather that having to write code to perform these tasks. Benefits: Saves development time. Users do not need to relearn these tasks with every program they own. The bugs will be worked out. Modular concept is efficient. It enables OLE (pronounced like the bullfight cheer), which stands for Object Linking and Embedding, and allows programs to call up other programs to perform certain tasks right within a dialog box. (An example would be Perfect Office, where users edit a graphic while in WordPerfect but Presentations is actually doing the editing.) ActiveX applications are designed to work with various computer languages, such as Jave, C++, etc. The programmer would then license applets from their developer to incorporate as features into his commercial product.
Applets that could be developed to benefit the
genealogical marketplace might be:
- Calendars, that understood when the fourth year was not
leap year, and could figure out a person's age at death.
- Date-Place Logic Applet. (What was the name of the place
at that time? What was the civil authority? Place name
spelling corrections.)
- Timeline generator
- Soundex (or other system) determiner.
- Help or Tutor with internal database, for research
assistance
- Jurisdiction History resource (What county what this town
in a hundred years ago?)
- Research Log, Sources Manager
- Translation Services
- Surname occurence & history
- Maps
- Client Reports for genealogy professionals
- Correspondence templates
- Built-in PERSI (index of genealogical periodicals)
- Vital Records availability
- Search Engine submission for putting queries on the
Internet
- GEDCOM Edit and Parsing
- "Forest" application. (Finding unconnected families in a
database)
- Data Manipulation
- Charts & Forms Printing
Jake suggested more than these, but it is easy to see that all the utilities we now buy or copy separately could now be built in. This would make them much easier to use as well as saving money in the long run.
One of the deterrents to this technology is the specialized nature of the genealogical market. Since there are a limited number of genealogical programs being marketed, the potential for selling applets is somewhat limited as well.
Issues of concern to genealogists looking at the future of technology: Data Privacy. This can be a danger when criminals use genealogy to build a fake identity or steal assets. Embarrassing family secrets can also be posted all over the world.
"If you make something easy, bad things can be easily done." An example cited is Halbert's Book of Gehrings (or any other surname.) They are actually lists of people with that surname taken from telephone books and other sources. This information is available for free on the Web. They often include generalizations about surname origins that are incorrect for the particular surname being compiled. The sales letter is often signed with a fake name that looks like the person is a relative.
How are users to be educated in correct ActiveX use?
Pedigrees may be fraudulent or rediculous. Dog pedigrees have been accidentally submitted to the Ancestral File.
If you once publish your genealogy and later make important corrections, how can you see that everyone who has downloaded your pedigree will be informed about the corrections? In the case of the Ancestral File, where pedigrees are merged and linked, good data has sometimes been corrupted.
How can you keep your documentation with your data? Ancestral File a good example of this problem.
CD-ROMS
Some CD products have hardly anything on them. The CD format is "sexy" right now, but often they are used when a high-density diskette would be large enough.
Good points are finding a lot of information in one place, which can be anywhere the user lives.
A lot of data is given in context. That is, a search algorithm allows you to find references to a name within a body of text. This is helpful when dealing with common names.
CDs can assist a beginning researcher to gather information which can later be verified from original sources.
The CD can be more up-to-date than a printed book. It can be expensive to purchase CDs only to discover that there is very little information that applies.
It can be hard to find qualified, unbiased & honest evaluations of CD-ROM products. (A reviewer may be qualified to judge the software that runs the CD, but unqualified to judge the accuracy of the transcription of the particular data.)
How does the CD compare with the original source material? If a CD is created from microfilm extraction the CD will be no better than the quality of the original microfilm. How good was the transcriber? Was the original handwriting foreign or illegible?
Does the CD make available data that would not be possible to view in the original?
Does the CD save on expensive travel?
Is the data available on-line? Would the CD be more convenient to use, or less?
Is the information on the CD something that would be easier to access from a book? (Some genealogy reference manuals and User Guides might not be available while using the computer for some other task and they are not portable if you have no laptop computer.)
Is the CD more convenient than buying a microfilm reader? Readers are expensive and very bulky.
Archival CD Services converts microfilm to CD-ROM images. CD purchase is comparable in cost to renting microfilms or buyng them. However, a microfilm image may be 2500 characters per inch in resolution and by the time it is converted to CD it may be 200 dpi. If the microfilm image was poor, the CD graphic image will be worse, especially if not computer enhanced.
The Death of Soundex? It is not always accurate. It has been used as a search formula instead of following the actual spelling of a name and has often failed under these conditions. For example, with Soundex Carter and Karter are not equivalent. The Internet is having trouble with Soundex. Many competitors, such as "Sound-Z" are available. Sound-Z incorporates more characters to describe the sound. There is a tape of a lecture available on the "Pitfalls of Soundex" from one of the recent conferences.
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