Genea-Blogger featured...Congratulations, Miriam!

Miriam Robbins Midkiff of AnceStories: The Stories of My Ancestors is featured in a post at Inside Google Book Search! The post, which includes a two-minute video, tells how Miriam uses Google Book Search to "help illuminate her understanding of her own ancestors" highlighting, among other finds, Alice Teddy, the world-famous roller-skating bear.

The video is very nice. Well done, Miriam!

Too bad they didn't include a link to her blog. . . [image above is a print-screen from the video]

New Director for Whitley County Historical Museum

Talk of the Town has a nice article on Dani Tippmann, the new director of the Whitley County Historical Museum. As a descendant of Tecumwah, who was a sister of Chief Little Turtle, her roots run deep in Whitley County, Indiana.

An article was also recently posted about the retirement of Ruth Kirk from that position this past January.

Talk of the Town is a blog written by Jennifer Zartman Romano that emphasizes the "good news" about the Columbia City community.

Whenever I went to the Museum, Ruth always had a smile on her face and a funny joke to share. She was a joy to work with on the few projects I was able to help with in the last couple of years. It was fun to see her portrayal of various "characters" of the county in the programs she produced. Ruth will definitely be missed and we thank her for her 19 productive years with the Museum!

Win A FREE Genetic Genealogy Test!

To celebrate the upcoming one-year anniversary of his blog, Blaine Bettinger, is giving away a FREE Genetic Genealogy Test! The winner will have the option of selecting from three different tests.

Contest rules can be found in his post Win A FREE Genetic Genealogy Test From The Genetic Genealogist!

Blaine also provides links to sample reports as well as links to information about the tests he is offering. Thanks to Blaine, and his informative posts, I've learned a lot about genetic genealogy this past year. Of course, before reading his blog I didn't know hardly anything about it, and I definitely don't understand everything he writes, but I certainly appreciate his efforts.

Now, guess I should check out those links to help me decide which test I'd like to have, just in case I'm the winner!

Free DNA eBook from the Genetic Genealogist

Blaine Bettinger, Ph.D., aka The Genetic Genealogist, has put together an interesting eBook on some of his favorite and most-visited posts.

He says "It has a wide array of posts for anyone interested in DNA, including people who are new to genetic genealogy and those who have had experience in the field. The title is: 10 DNA Testing Myths Busted, and Other Favorite Posts."

The eBook, which is in pdf form, can be downloaded from the link on his post titled If You Just Can’t Get Enough of The Genetic Genealogist…

Thank you, Blaine!

North Webster Cemetery Walk

Last week the Indiana Genealogical Society blog posted about the upcoming Cemetery Walk of North Webster Cemetery in Kosciusko County.

Sponsored by The Local History and Genealogy Center of the North Webster Community Public Library (301 N. Main Street, North Webster IN 46555) the walk is scheduled for Sunday, September 9. Beginning at 1 pm and going every 10-15 minutes until approximately 2:45 pm. In the event of rain, the walk will be rescheduled to Sunday, September 16. After the walk, refreshments will be offered at the library.

Start at the Library to join a guided tour group and receive information on the residents being highlighted this year: Perry E. Mock; Louie and Dorthea Tenney Engle; John S. Hall; Clara Kiser Cripe Rothenberger; Ned & Helen Raver, and Eleanor Joy Warner.

The re-enactors highlighting the life of the selected individuals include Monica Wilson, Don Minear, Deb Minear, Clarissa DuBois, Alan Leinbach, and Helen Leinbach.

This sounds like it might be fun. Mrs. Rothenberger was one of the long-time third grade teachers when I attended school at North Webster, though I had Mrs. Dunkin when I was in third grade. Helen Raver was a local beautician, she did my hair for my senior picture. Mrs. Warner was the art teacher for many years. My Dad's parents, Charles and Elsie Shuder Wiseman, and Elsie's parents, Isaac and Nancy Lavering Shuder, are buried in the North Webster Cemetery along with other relatives and lots of other people I knew in earlier times.

In addition to the cemetery walk, The Local History and Genealogy Center will also be accepting pre-paid orders for their upcoming book "Transcription of the North Webster Cemetery" beginning on September 9th. This sounds like it will be an awesome resource! The book will include information on over 2,000 burials, with photos of all the stones and over 950 obituaries. It will also include a site map and a transcription of the original plat map, along with an index. The book was made possible by a grant from the Esther Pfleiderer Charitable Trust. Softbound copies will be available for $45 (shipping & handling and tax is additional), and hardbound copies will be available for $75 (shipping & handling and tax is additional). To order, or for more information, contact Beth Smith at the North Webster Community Library -- phone (574) 834-7122.

More on the Issues - Recommended Reading

The ramifications of the recent fiasco with Ancestry and the "Internet Biographical Collection" are yet to be felt. The issues are far more complex than any of us ever dreamed of and will probably never be resolved to everyone's satisfaction. There will always be controversy over what was done and, as I said before, we all need to Take a deep breath and relax...

That said, you may want to read the following posts:

Dick Eastman with To Cache or Not to Cache: The Definitive Answer Though I'm not sure his is the "Definitive Answer" he does discuss the issues of Copyright and the Field vs. Google federal case on the legality of caching.

Miriam Midkiff on More on the Issue of the Internet Biographical Collection discusses the evolving world of genealogy and what that means to all of us as well as what our responsibilities are. "Our role, then, is to act responsibly by using good methodology in our research, citing our sources; by respecting genealogy websites' terms and conditions; and by learning the copyright laws that protect our own work."

Randy Seaver has posted MyFamily Inc. Terms and Conditions stating that "It would be useful for everyone to read the Terms and Conditions..." I would add, not just for the Generations Network websites, but it is up to the user to read the terms and conditions of ANY website before we use it or contribute to it. And not to just read the legalese but to UNDERSTAND it completely.

Some Final (?) thoughts on the Ancestry Fiasco

The following message was posted at 5:25 p.m (Eastern Time) on 24/7 Family History Circle:

"Hi, my name is Kendall Hulet, and I’m a product manager at Ancestry.com. I’ve probably met a lot of you at FGS, NGS, and other conferences. If not, I look forward to meeting you in the future.

"I wanted to write you a note because I’m extremely concerned about the frustrations that the recently-removed Internet Biographical Collection has caused. We had hoped to provide a way for you to be able to search the entire web easily for genealogically-relevant pages and provide for preservation of sources for future generations. In looking back, we understand why members of the community are upset. We’ve heard you loud and clear, and we’ve removed this product with no intention of re-releasing it. Instead, it is my hope that someday we’ll be able to provide a free web search engine that links directly back to the live web pages, and can become a useful tool to the genealogical community. If we do move forward with this type of initiative, we will seek your input and talk more with community leaders to make sure we get it right."

He stops just short of an apology, expresses concern, and offers hope for the possibility of a better research tool in the future (with input from community leaders!). Hmm.

I took a bit of a break from the genea-blogosphere most of yesterday and today so I am catching up on things.

Yesterday Jasia asked us Do You Know Who Your Friends Are? If you haven't read it yet, you should. And the comments also. I too had been wondering why there was no response from the other major players in the genealogy industry or from many of those that call themselves professional genealogists. Ancestry has a "long arm" in this business and likely affects areas that we aren't fully aware of. I don't fault anyone for their silence on the matter. You do what you think is best at the time. There were some from the "commercial" and "professional" ranks who did step forward. Jasia acknowledges them and I applaud their courage to speak out.

I was amazed to see my experience with this issue quoted in Ancestry.com - You're Not Going To Believe This on Legacy News (written by Geoff Rasmussen, I think ?) As he stated "Ancestry does provide a wonderful service. Although a bit pricey for many, I'm sure they put millions and millions of dollars into their efforts. We should not expect something for nothing. This week, however, Ancestry went too far." He went on to explain what had happened. Not only did he acknowledge that what Ancestry had done was wrong but he also listed many of the other genea-bloggers and linked to their posts on the subject. Thank you Legacy! In the interest of full disclosure, I have been a user of Legacy since version 3.0 and am looking forward to version 7.0 when it comes out in a few months. It's not likely that whomever wrote this post on Legacy News was aware that I use their software.

I thought the variety of comments on Dick Eastman's two posts on the subject was interesting. Opinions varied widely. I stopped by Dick's booth at the FGS Conference two weeks ago and thanked him for the service he provides all of us with his online newsletter. He seemed genuinely pleased that I had taken a few moments of my time to let him know that what he has done for the genealogy community is appreciated. I may not agree with some of the opinions he has expressed on this issue, or past issues for that matter, but that doesn't change the fact that he does provide us with a service in presenting the news and issues of this community. And I still appreciate what he does - he makes a very good devil's advocate, indeed. However, I'll admit that I was pleased to see him finally admit that Ancestry had blundered when they released this "collection" of websites (this was in response to Jasia's comments on 08/30), and I quote:

"I do think some of the things that Ancestry.com did recently were good business practice while some other things were really stupid. We have a mixed bag here. Displaying other peoples' web pages in frames so as to hide the URL of the originating web page is probably one of the dumbest things I have ever seen. I totally agree with you there. I am amazed that such action got past the company's internal product reviews or the senior managers, most of whom I know personally. I usually respect their judgement and was surprised with that one "feature." It is not like them. Somebody was asleep!"

Speculation regarding the "IBC" and Ancestry

After my last post regarding Ancestry removing the "Internet Biographical Collection" I did some checking.

As of half an hour ago (8:10 p.m. eastern time) if you do a standard search, the "Internet Biographical Collection" does not display in the results under Historical Records/Birth, Marriage, & Death. However, you can still go directly to the page for the database (the link was posted earlier today by at least two other blogs but I'm not gonna post it here). It shows up as an "Unknown" database but still has the same verbiage for the source information, i.e. it is an Ancestry database. And it can still be searched.

In the record detail they have added the url of the website as another piece of information, and it is clickable. But if it is a long url, the full address does not display.

In their announcement, Ancestry said "We have decided to remove this collection and search engine from Ancestry.com for the time being." This tells me that it will probably be back. But perhaps they will have learned something from all this and will "do it right" this time.

• They need to change the wording for the source information so that it is very clear that the content is from another site and is not actually their content.
• They need to prominently display the full url of the website where the information is coming from.
• They need to remove the link to the cached page as a default. A link to a cached page should only be displayed if the original website is no longer a live site.
• They should offer it as a free service. It should not be a subscription database.

I'm sure there are some other things they should do also ;-) but I'll leave those suggestions to someone else.

My original post on the subject "Is this Fair Use?" includes some screen shots and I have some additional thoughts in Take a deep breath and relax...

I'm sure Ancestry never thought there would be such an outcry over what they have done. It's a credit to genealogists everywhere, not just the genea-bloggers, who spoke up and made their voice heard. Your opinion does matter, sometimes!

Ancestry Removes the Internet Biographical Collection

Julianna Smith has just posted the announcement that the Internet Biographical Collection has been removed from Ancestry

The message she received from Ancestry:

Earlier this week we launched the Internet Biographical Collection on Ancestry.com. Our goal was to offer members a search engine that focused primarily on genealogy resources. We intended this collection to help surface family history information that many people would not be able to find easily because it is often scattered among numerous websites across the Internet. We cached individual Web pages in an effort to preserve history – if a Web page featuring important family history information were taken down in the future, a cached version would still be available.

Many people have expressed concerns about the collection and the search engine we created on Ancestry.com. We recognize the significant time and resources members of the genealogical community invest to make their family history research available online.

Over the past few days we have reevaluated this collection’s goals, caching and crawling ability, and user experience. We have decided to remove this collection and search engine from Ancestry.com for the time being. We are still dedicated to providing family historians the online tools and aggregated records that make it easier to trace their family tree and will work to develop a solution that meets those needs in a way that will be most beneficial to our customers and the community.

Take a deep breath and relax...

Legal or not, by initially charging for content created by other people Ancestry has not endeared themselves to many members of the genealogical community. I want people to find my webpages. I want people to use that information. I'm not going to "take it down" or install a robots.txt file to prohibit them or any other search engine from providing links to my site. That would be stupid and defeat the purpose of publishing it in the first place. The problem I had was that the pages, as they were first displayed, were made to appear as though they were content on Ancestry.com and the link to the "live" page was not obvious. The description that Ancestry provides for this "database" is misleading and the url for the web page is not displayed anywhere within the context of the detail for the "hit" which still makes it appear as though it is their content. Has this been a big blunder on Ancestry's part? Sure. Am I going to cancel my subscription? Probably Not. Will I renew my subscription? Not sure.

The way I understand copyright is that currently anything that is published (whether on a blog, website, book, magazine, etc.) is under copyright whether it has been officially registered or not. So my work is under copyright. Big Deal. The cost of registering your work under copyright is prohibitive. Proving "loss of monetary gain" is nearly impossible. I'm not going to be able to stop anyone from taking it, whether that be a big company or an individual. The only way I could stop it is by not publishing it in the first place.

A Creative Commons license has been added to this blog, prominently, in the upper right corner. I've done this not to stop someone from using my content but to make them at least think about how they will use it. And, hopefully they will use proper source citations and attribute what they do use to me. The license also, supposedly, prohibits use of my content for monetary gain. Will it stop someone or some company from doing so? Probably not. Will it give me recourse to take action if they do so? Not sure. But it makes me feel a bit better for having it displayed prominently.

And why am I researching my family history? Not for myself - for my ancestors, so that they might not be forgotten - for my relatives, so that they will know something of their history - for others unrelated to me so that they might get some insight into what life was like for the common person in different times. So why would I want to stop publishing? Why would I want to prohibit search engines from finding my stuff?

My first post on this subject Is this Fair Use? shows some screen shots before Ancestry changed it to a "free" database.

Some additional posts on the subject:

• Dick Eastman has a post announcing that the Internet Biographical Collection is Free at Ancestry.com and there are already some diverse opinions in the comments.
• Craig Manson speaks out with Ancestry.com: Thieves, Hypocrites, Blunderers, or Fair Users?
• Susan Kitchens has a parody of the Ancestry home page Ancestry.com scrapes websites; places harvested content behind membership wall
• Chris Dunham was the first to report, last October, that Ancestry had a bot that was scanning the Web for biographical information and has written Caching for Cash
• Denise Olson thinks Ancestry is More Naughty Than Nice
• Stephen Danko has some Thoughts on Ancestry’s Internet Biographical Collection
• Bill West talks about Early Morning Genealogy Scraping
• John Newmark adds his thoughts on Caching, Ancestry, Archive, and Google
• Lori Thorton has issued a Challenge to everyone who is outraged by Ancestry's actions to get on board FamilySearchIndexing's project and help index "the vault" in Salt Lake City. The sooner we get this done, the less dependent we become upon The Generations Network!

Lets take something positive away from this fiasco. Volunteer with FamilySearch Indexing so their content becomes available sooner. Contribute. Don't stop publishing.

*** Update 10:25 a.m. ***
Kimberly Powell has posted The Legality of Caching with some additonal interesting thoughts on this new tool in Ancestry's arsenal.

*** Additional Links Added at 6:40 p.m. ***

• Dear Myrtle speaks out with Numbers, ranking & Ancestry.com
• Randy Seaver has More on Ancestry's "Internet Biographical Collection"
• footnoteMaven tells us why Just Because You Can Doesn't Mean You Should

Is this Fair Use?

This morning I received an email from someone who was asking me for more information about a person they had found on my site at Ancestry.com but the first thing that popped into my feeble brain was that I don't have a website on Ancestry and I knew that what they were referring to was not on my freepages at RootsWeb!

So I went to Ancestry and did a search for "Phend" which brought up the following screen and didn't see anything out of the ordinary (click on any of the images to make them easier to read):



So I elected to view all 229 results:



The "Internet Biographical Collection" jumped out at me. Notice the padlock? I clicked on that link, but this is a "for pay" subscription database, and since I wasn't logged in I couldn't see the detail any more than the listing of pages, all of which, except for the last one, are from my website and they are definitely NOT part of Ancestry.com!!!



After logging in and clicking on "View Record" on one of the listings, what you see is shown below. No indication of where this came from, only a small link to "View Cached Web Page", Okay, so it says it is a cached page. . .



Click on "View Cached Web Page" (click on these images to make them bigger) you'll see a small link at the top of the page to "View Live web page" and it will then take you to the page, maybe.



For this particular page the link works because my site is still live. But when I was investigating all this I had gone to some obituary links. The site where the obituary was retrieved from is even more "hidden" for lack of a better word - many newspapers only keep obituaries online for a short time so the page is no longer live. I wonder if Ancestry.com is paying those sites to "store" their obituaries and make them available to Ancestry subscribers?

Is this legal or moral? How is it right for Ancestry.com to take my website pages, which I've made freely available, and CHARGE people to use them? And if they can legally or morally do this, how can they in turn say that it is illegal for their users (me and you) to use their images (census records, draft cards, etc.) on our websites or in our books or other publications?

The more I think about this, the angrier I am getting. At first I thought, okay, they say it is a cached web page, but it's not overly obvious. But they are charging people for access to my stuff!!! I really don't think it would bother me so much if this wasn't hidden behind a padlock. The more people that can find my data and possibly connect to me or someone else, the better - but they shouldn't have to pay to see it! Now, Ancestry is probably going to say they are simply providing a service for all of us poor webmasters and making it so that more people will see our stuff - but does that make it right? They are profiting from my work, and not just my work but the work of anyone with a genealogy related website. Will my blog pages show up next?

This is different than Google or Yahoo or any other search engine storing cached pages or providing links to websites. This is a company using other peoples work for their own gain - Ancestry is charging for these 'searches'. That is just not right, and not just because this is my work showing up - if you have genealogy pages out there anywhere they will probably show up as part of this new Ancestry database.

*** Update 4:00 PM Tuesday ***
I spent a while this morning and afternoon putting this post together, and while I was doing so, it appears that "all hel* was breaking loose" on this issue, see these posts with some very good commentary on the subject:

• Kimberly Powell with Has Ancestry.com Gone to Far?
• Janice Brown with Ancestry.com Hijacks Cow Hampshire
• Randy Seaver with Ancestry.com is Caching some web site data
• Amy Crooks with Ancestry.com Nothing but Theifs

*** Update 4:44 PM Tuesday ***

Ancestry.com has now made the "Internet Biographical Collection" a "free" resource. You have to register to view these free records, which is not the same as signing up for a free trial, but why should you even have to register to view the "Internet Biographical Collection"? Registration is not required to view the Ancestry World Tree entries. To my way of thinking, this step by Ancestry does not entirely resolve the issue.

*** Update 11:30 PM Tuesday ***

Dick Eastman's post yesterday on The Generations Network Receives Patent for Correlating Genealogy Records has a lot of comments dealing with the Internet Biographical Collection, which really had nothing to do with his original topic, so you could say the comments thread got hijacked. As can be expected there is a wide range of opinions on the matter. Some make sense, others don't. Some valid, some not. And Dick is really good at playing the devil's advocate!

DNA and Genealogy Research

Yesterday, Leland Meitzler posted Americans Are Individually a Mix of Many Races at The Genealogy Blog which is really about this article at The Observer: The genes that build America. It's a bit long but well worth reading.

It starts out talking about the discovery of the relationship between ancestors of Al Sharpton and Strom Thurmond, which is 'old news' but once you get past that, it gets interesting.

"America has embarked on an amazing journey to explore its own past. Millions of Americans of every creed and colour are exploring their family histories in a genealogy boom that is redefining who they are and what it means to be American. The internet has allowed people to find obscure information at the click of a mouse that was previously locked away on dusty library shelves. They are also using modern DNA techniques to research their racial history, creating a multi-million dollar industry of consumer genetics. Like Sharpton, many are making shocking discoveries. They are finding slaves and slave-owners. Far from being a nation of different races, many are finding they have mixed pasts. Blacks are discovering they have white blood, whites are finding black relatives. Native Americans are growing in numbers, not because of a high birth rate, but because many Americans are discovering unknown native ancestors written in their DNA."

"Last year, Professor Peter Fine at Florida Atlantic University had an idea for an art class. He would gather a group of students to produce work around their idea of their racial identity. But as part of the class he asked them to take a DNA test that would break down their racial background. His bet was that most of the class - of whom the majority saw themselves as whites of European descent - had no real idea who they were.

"He was right. Of 13 students, only one turned out to be completely European. The rest displayed a mixture of European, Native American, African and Asian genes. The one black student turned out to be 21 per cent white. Fine himself - who admits to looking like a corn-fed stereotype of a white Midwesterner - discovered he was a quarter Native American. 'I honestly think these tests could have a large effect on American consciousness of who we are. If Americans recognise themselves as a mixed group of people, that could really change things,' he said.

"Fine has a point. For centuries, America has been less a racial melting pot and more a stew, where different communities bump up against each other, but keep mostly to themselves. Yet, as millions of Americans take DNA tests, they are discovering a surprising truth: America's strict racial lines are, in fact, blurred. One-third of white Americans, according to some tests, will possess between two and 20 per cent African genes. The majority of black Americans have some European ancestors."

New Opportunity for DNA Research?

A recent posting by Dick Eastman reported that Ancestry.com was partnering with Sorenson Genomics, a DNA research firm, to be able to provide DNA testing and somehow link that data to Ancestry's existing family information. This is big news, but how is it going to work? As with many of the announcements of other genealogical collaborations last month, there will be questions without answers and it will be a while before all the ramifications are known. Dick posted yesterday's press release with more details on the partnership.

An article in the Salt Lake Tribune makes the outlandish claim that "In less than three weeks, people will be able to find distant relatives by clicking a mouse. And they can be sure that their supposed family members are related to them because instead of using old documents, people will locate their relatives through DNA tests."

DNA replace documents? I suppose that could happen, but not likely in the near future. Find relatives with the click of a mouse? According to 'The Generations Network' and other database providers, we can do that now. The implication is that DNA testing will make it so. It will only happen if you and your relatives have been tested. It'll take years of collecting and testing DNA samples. The state of current DNA testing and its use for genealogical research is limited. Not enough people have had DNA tests done, most cannot afford it. Hopefully this partnership will make testing more affordable so more people can have it done, and if that happens it may make it easier to make the connections to unknown relatives. Only time will tell. I'm certainly looking forward to the time that I can find my relatives with just the click of a mouse!

For more information on this partnership and DNA testing check out these posts:

• Tim Agazio - Genealogy Reviews Online
• Blaine Bettinger - The Genetic Genealogist
• Diane Haddad - Genealogy Insider
• Randy Seaver - Genea-Musings

GSWC Workshop

The Genealogical Society of Whitley County (GSWC) held a Beginning Genealogy Workshop in conjunction with the Peabody Public Library on Saturday, March 17th. Attendance was limited to 20 people and the spaces quickly filled up. We were told there were enough people who wanted to attend that we should have another workshop - so, we will, on Sunday, May 20th. We are also planning a workshop for the kids who sign up for the 4-H Genealogy program, probably sometime in April.

My portion of the workshop covered "Internet Genealogy" and was only supposed to be 45 minutes. It ran a bit long, like an hour and 15 minutes total. Thank goodness there weren't any problems connecting to the internet! Randy Seaver mentioned that he'd had some connection problems with his presentation on blogging - I hadn't even considered that scenario. Guess I'd better make alternate plans, just in case.

As promised to the attendees, the Web Site Links have been posted at Kinexxions to make it easier for them to visit the sites listed on the handout (and so they don't have to try to type in the URLs for those sites). Have Fun!

GSWC and Family Websites

The Genealogical Society of Whitley County (Indiana) was founded in the summer of 1995 and many of it's members have completed several projects since then. You'll have to scroll through a list of links at the GSWC website to find it but their online data includes complete transcriptions of the county cemeteries, a listing of those who served in the military, index to naturalizations, an index to Federal Land Patents and much more.

In addition, others have contributed data to my web site at Kinexxions which includes indexes to Whitley County marriage records, death records, guardianships, and estate packets as well as some original marriage documents, the 1889 county Plat Map, and transcribed obituaries.

Kinexxions also features information on some of the Whitley County kin that I am researching: Brubaker, Dunfee, Foster, Goodrich, Helms, Jones, Joslin, Phend, Robison, Stem, and Wise. Surnames in Elkhart County being researched include Berlin, Phend and Yarian. There are transcriptions of letters found at the Nappanee Public Library dating from 1862-1871 as well as some family pictures. Oh, and my grandmother wrote what she called the beginning of her autobiography and that has been posted as well. My grandmother was really the catalyst that got me into family research. Well, that and the fact that from 1984-1986 I lived just a few blocks from the Allen County Public Library!

It's taken a lot of time and effort but it is so rewarding, especially when I make contact with an unknown cousin!