Wednesday, May 14, 2008

Family History Catalogue To Be Enhanced - Sounds Like Good News for Genealogists

FamilySearch.org and FamilyLink.com have today announced a collaboration to enhance the Family History catalogue with 'Web 2.0' features.

Catalogue entries will become available to search engines and catalogue users will be able to annotate library listings and will be linked to on-line resources or even to publishers, for instance. This sounds like great news, especially if the many family history and genealogical societies are involved in this as publishers.

"FamilyLink.com will make searches more useful by allowing the user to browse, sort (by popularity, relevance, most used, etc.), and perform multiple searches. A new "probability engine" feature will calculate the likelihood that a particular source contains the desired item. It will also be able to search across someone's entire family tree to determine which ancestry lines have the highest likelihood of success based on known sources."

Paul Allen, CEO of FamilyLink.com, Inc. is quoted as saying:

"We will enhance the catalog by connecting it with new innovative tools, along with the best resources of our WorldVitalRecords.com databases, the FamilyLink.com social networking site, and our We're Related application in Facebook. Putting all of these resources together will dramatically change the meaning of 'search' in genealogy."

Maybe there will even be a Facebook application very soon for the FHL catalogue as there is for Douglas College's Library? I haven't always been happy with WorldVitalRecords.com as some will know, but I do love Facebook and think this kind of social networking is the way of the future.

See the news release on http://www.familysearch.org/:
http://www.familysearch.org/Eng/Home/News/frameset_news.asp?PAGE=Press/2008-5-14_Library_Catalog_Upgrade.asp

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