Find the Dash / Finding and sharing the stories between the dates on the gravestone Wed, 22 Jan 2025 18:19:18 +0000 en-US hourly 1 https://wordpress.org/?v=6.7.1 /wp-content/uploads/2024/02/cropped-findthedash-placeholder1-32x32.png Find the Dash / 32 32 Cataloging Family Heirlooms with Artifcts /cataloging-family-heirlooms/ Sat, 29 Jun 2024 16:05:47 +0000 /?p=255 Not only do the people in our trees have stories, the stuff in our house does, too. Some of it we’ve brought into our lives, others was passed down to us from relatives that have died. But, the chances are, when we’re gone, not many of those objects will mean anything to anyone else unless we’ve specifically shared the stories behind them. Maybe that’s OK for some things–a t-shirt that was special to us may not need to be kept or passed down–but other things, like a locket that belonged to a great-grandparent, should probably be preserved and saved for another generation.

I went around and around in my head about the best way to save these stories, and how to encourage my parents to do the same. Initially I was thinking just a Google Doc would do the trick. Or maybe I’d build out something on Airtable. But then I came across Artifcts and I realized I’d found my solution.

Actually, to be truthful, I skipped over Artifcts the first time or two I saw it, probably as a RootsTech vendor or something. “Interesting idea,” I thought, but my typical concerns about these very specific services came up: Would the UI be good? Is it secure? Most importantly: can I get my data out of it?

Thankfully, after investigating these concerns, I am more than satisfied.

Background

Artifcts was inspired by the passing the co-founder Heather’s mother. Though she was glad to have things that were important to her mother, she didn’t know the story behind lots of them. This inspired her to create a service that would make it easy for others to tell and share these stories before it was too late.

Interface

The UI for adding a new item is simple by default, allowing you to add up to five photos, videos, or audio files, name and describe your item, write a story about it, note its country of origin, and designate how you want the item handled in the future. Additionally, you can open the “full form” view which provides the chance to add additional metadata about the item’s provenance and physical features (I like the “current location” field).

Likewise, the display page for each item is clean and well laid out. Your collection can be viewed as a list, tiles, a flipbook, or–interestingly–in a timeline view.

A poor UI could really kill a product like this, but I’ve got no complaints about Artifcts on that front.

Security and Privacy

With the company started by two former CIA employees, I had an expectation that security and privacy would be taken into consideration. They certainly were.

Their site outlines their security measures, which include 256-bit AES protection for files at rest and SSL (natch) for files in transit. And to show they’ve given extra thought, shared artifacts have sensitive data like location, value, and documentation kept private.

Similarly, I like their approach to privacy. Items are private by default but can be shared with members or anyone with an email address or with the public.

Lastly, a nice feature Artifcts offers is a legacy contact option to designate will be contacted and given access to your collection in the event of your passing.

Export Capability

This is one of the most important pieces of the puzzle for me because if I’m going to spend time taking pictures, writing or recording stories, and fleshing out metadata, I don’t want to worry about the site shutting down and taking my data with it or only offering some unusable XML export. When I saw what Artifcts offers, I was hard pressed to find anything to complain about.

From your main collection page, there is a “Download My Artifcts” link that lets you get an Excel file, a CSV, a PDF, or a ZIP file of your collection at any time. The ZIP file contains an Excel spreadsheet of your collection as well as any images or recordings you’ve made. Perfect.

Other Interesting Features

While I’m not a huge fan of QR codes in general, I do like that Artifcts offers the ability to tie QR codes to individual Artifcts pages. You can either buy a sheet of QR code stickers that you can stick to items or print out a unique QR code to use. This approach could make it a little bit easier for others to hunt down information about items that are important to you after you’re gone.

Artifcts also partner with Akin to create books with your collection and you can get individual free informal valuations on your items from Heritage Auctions.

Price

As of summer 2024, they offer a free plan that lets you add five items to test out the service. For $45 a year you can add up to 30 items and get some bonus features. This, honestly, doesn’t seem like a plan I would opt for. If I’m going to pay, I’m going all in and don’t want restrictions.

For $119/year, you get unlimited entries. That initially sounded like a bit much to add to an already large list of genealogy services I subscribe to, but with an unlimited subscription you also get three additional unlimited gift subscriptions to give to friends and family! This averages out to $30/year for four unlimited accounts, which is more than reasonable. Artifcts also occasionally offers coupons which could discount your first year a bit.

Conclusion

I’m still in the early stages of using Artifcts, but I am thoroughly impressed by it. The UI is solid, the price is reasonable, the metadata tied to each item is useful, and the privacy controls are solid. I hope they offer 2FA at some point, but overall, I don’t hesitate to recommend Artifcts at all. It serves an important, specific purpose and it does so safely and elegantly.

]]> Resources for Free High Quality Historical Images /resources-for-free-high-quality-historical-images/ Tue, 09 Apr 2024 14:41:54 +0000 /?p=237 Adding visuals to your family history is essential in making it feel real and tangible to readers. Of course, starting with images from your own family’s collection is where you should start, but sometimes finding historical images that relate to places your family lived or visited can also be a great way to add interest to your stories.

Here are some large, very high quality collections to start. Images from these locations are freely available to use.

]]> Publishing a Family History Book /publishing-a-family-history-book/ Wed, 03 Apr 2024 15:56:41 +0000 /?p=173 What I’ve Published So Far

Since 2015, I’ve periodically self-published private family history books for my parents, sister, and aunts. Below is a brief description of each edition I’ve done and the different approaches I’ve taken.

  • First edition (summer 2015) – For each side of my family printed the full book-style report from my desktop software.8.5×11 paperback from Lulu.
  • Second edition (December 2016) – For each side of my family printed the full book-style report from my desktop software and stories from my private family history blog. 8.5×11 paperback from Lulu.
  • Third & Fourth editions (December 2018 & 2019) – This is where I introduced the current generation of family history narrative books, organized by couple and including chapters for only direct-line ancestors with enough to write about. I printed these on 8.5×11 format at Staples.
  • Introduction of More Family History (December 2020) – I wanted to start publishing stories of non-direct line relatives (and even some non-relatives) as well as some of the more interesting research processes I went through. This was a relatively small book and cost less than $3 to print in paperback at B&N Press. I was really happy with the quality of this little book and it served as a nice placeholder book until the next version of the larger narrative was ready to go.
  • Fifth editions (December 2022) – This was the big year… I printed hardcover 6×9″ versions at B&N Press of both lines’ narratives as well as a new edition of More Family History. I was very pleased with how these turned out, except for the fact the cover art was a little bit off center. I didn’t have enough time to order proofs before giving these as gifts (the turnaround time was several weeks), so I had to live with it.
  • Forthcoming sixth editions (December 2025, most likely) – A relative asked me why I didn’t just combine the More Family History stores into the main book and the more I thought about it, the more I liked that idea. So, in addition to new updates, I’m now structuring the new book in three major sections: Direct-Line Ancestors, Ancillary Stories, and Appendix: Research Notes. Stylewise, I think I may tweak it as well. Currently, paragraphs are not indented and there is extra space between paragraphs. I may forego that and opt instead for indented paragraphs and then remove the space between paragraphs.

    One of the big changes I’d like to make is to tape an envelope on the inside cover that holds a (thin?) folded family tree of direct-line ancestors. It’s tough to give a good overall visual of the family structure to readers in a 6×9″ format book.

How I Am Structuring and Compiling My Book, Which May or May Not be Right for You

TK – this section’s next!

Other Resources

]]> Beneficial Uses of AI in Genealogy /beneficial-uses-of-ai-in-genealogy/ Fri, 22 Mar 2024 20:41:38 +0000 /?p=216 When it comes to the use of AI in genealogy (hold on! don’t tune out just yet!), I don’t get all that excited by AI biographies, image generation, or talking ancestors. Those things are all fine, but still feel more like parlor tricks than anything all that useful. However, I can definitely see its usefulness in things like record transcription, particularly long handwritten records like land deeds and probate records. This is where I’m going to collect some of my favorite examples of where AI is being actually helpful.

If this type of thing is intriguing to you, The Family History AI Show podcast (hosted by Mark Thompson and Steve Little) may be of interest.

Important caveat: The ethics of how large AI companies operate and the substantial carbon footprint they create are serious considerations in one’s use of AI-powered tools. I acknowledge this and, honestly, feel conflicted even talking positively about uses of AI in genealogy here. I’m still thinking through those implications and the trade-offs. I hope the future has more companies that operate their training ethically and sustainably, though I don’t feel terribly hopeful on that front.

Transcribing a Land Deed and Then Summarizing It

Here’s the thing: even when transcribing the text of a land deed, the text is often so dense and written in a legal hand such that it’s nearly impeneterable, even if the transcription is 100% accurate (which it isn’t).

Then, I had a thought.

I started by grabbing some AI-transcribed text from a land deed on FamilySearch:

Hand-written land deed from the 1860s.

It was far from perfect, but I didn’t do anything to clean it up. I took the text, pasted into Copilot (which uses ChatGPT) and asked, “I’ve got this transcribed text of a land deed that is somewhat messy and hard to read. Summarize this following text so that an eighth grader would understand it.”

ChatGPT prompt of a long land deed transcription that's about 80% accurate, by an eyeball estimate.

And I’ll be darned if it didn’t do just that. Not only is it taking legalese from the 1800s and summarizing it in an easy-to-read way, it’s somehow overcoming the messy transcription:

ChatGPT summary of the AI-generated land deed text. It reads: "This is a document from July 1, 1863, where a man named Samuel F. Flood from Philadelphia sold a piece of land to Walter McMichael, a blacksmith from the same city. Samuel received $525 for the land. The land is located on the north side of College Street, 502 feet west from the west side of a certain street. The land is about 16 feet wide and extends 50 feet north. It’s in the first ward of the city, which used to be part of Southwark district. The land has a building on it. The agreement also states that Walter has to pay a yearly rent of $24 in two payments every January and July. Samuel promises that he has the right to sell this land and that Walter and his heirs can keep it forever, as long as they pay the rent. The document was signed and sealed by both parties and witnessed by others. It was officially recorded on July 14, 1863, by an official named H. Burrison."

I feel like this is one of the less evil uses of AI that I might be able to get behind.

As of July 2024, FamilySearch now has AI-generated summaries available for some record sets (note, however, it will only summarize a single page, not a multiple-page document).

Transcribing a Handwritten Image and then Translating It

With the free ChatGPT-4o, I tossed it a Lithuanian birth record with the prompt, “This image contains handwriting in Lithuanian. Can you transcribe it and then translate it to English?”

And I’ll be damned if it didn’t “actually…” me:

It then provided a translation:

Having worked with Lithuanian cousins that translated this document originally for me, this is a pretty decent translation. The names clearly provided the most trouble, but the idea that you can take a handwritten document, not recognize the language the handwriting it’s in, and manage to get a rough English transcription in a matter of seconds is pretty darn powerful.

Querying Your Own Documents

In October 2024, Google opened up NotebookLM, which allows you to point it at your own documents and interact with them in a chatbot-type fashion. Google says they do not use your documents for training (but, of course, I still wouldn’t use it on data I wouldn’t want someone else seeing or having access to).

In my test, I uploaded my narrative family history books and asked NotebookLM to list all of my ancestors that fought in the Civil War and which regiment they were in. It was complete and accurate in its response. This is useful.

Not as useful and also super creepy–but admittedly technically impressive–is NotebookLM’s audio summary of your data. It’s essentially a two-person podcast-like discussion based on what you’ve pointed it at. I did find two random people talking about my family history like it was the most interesting thing ever to be both engaging and discomforting. Accuracy was quite good, only misstating facts a couple of times in 24 minutes. I’m not sure why the “hosts” had to themselves say they were related to everyone in the book (and at one point claiming authorship of it!), but nevertheless, it’s one of those very interesting uses of AI that could absolutely make the Internet a much, much worse place to try and find useful content. We do not need piles of AI-hosted podcasts popping up in the podcast platforms.

]]> Family History Gift Ideas /family-history-gift-ideas/ Tue, 12 Mar 2024 20:52:26 +0000 /?p=204 Here is a list of family history-related gifts I’ve given family over the last ten years or so.

  • Family history narrative books (more here on this idea).
  • A square canvas with a screenshot of a historical map of the neighborhood where my dad grew up. I got the image from PhilaGeoHistory’s Map Viewer by finding the map from the appropriate time period. (Rumsey’s collection might be a good place to start for other areas.)
  • A new wedding album for my Mom of her parents. We came across some great color slides of their wedding from 1940 and my grandparents never had a proper photo album made, only some individual photos. So, I took the color slides, their professionally-taken photos, and some documents and news clippings about their wedding and put them in a Mixbook. It came out beautifully.
  • Postcards from the motel that my grandparents built and ran in the 1960s (found on eBay).
  • A matchbook from a restaurant that my great-uncle and aunt ran (found on eBay).
  • Cufflinks from the specific Masonic lodge my great-grandfather belonged to (found on eBay).
  • A trivet from the specific Masonic lodge my great-grandfather belonged to (found on eBay). (Actually, this was one I kept for myself. But it would be a good gift!)
  • A paper program from the specific Masonic lodge my great-grandfather belonged to (found on eBay). (Kept this one, too.)
  • A model truck that was the exact model my Grandfather drove for his contractor business in the 1960s. My wife even painted his business info to match exactly what his looked like.
  • A framed pair of pictures of my great-grandmother with her signature (taken from her naturalization papers) below.
  • A fan chart of our tree at this moment. This is both the most obvious gift and the one I was least satisfied with, despite ordering from a company well known for this sort of thing. But, it serves its purpose of giving a good visual overview of the family even if I don’t necessarily view it as display-ready. Reference more than keepsake.

Additional ideas

  • A calendar with historical family photos, events, and ancestor’s birth/marriage/death dates marked.

]]> Personal Podcasting /personal-podcasting/ Fri, 01 Mar 2024 00:45:05 +0000 /?p=180 I’ve been kicking around the idea of doing a podcast available only to family. Topics would be individual ancestors, interesting stories, and interviews with relatives.

Producing a podcast is something I’ve done and am relatively comfortable with (even if it’s been a while), but the personal/private angle is something a little different.

Some links I’ve gathered to go through:

]]> Philadelphia (PA) Research Guide /philadelphia-pa-research-guide/ Tue, 13 Feb 2024 00:48:33 +0000 /?p=131 I do a fair bit of research in the Philadelphia area, as that’s where most of my family was living from the mid-1800s through the mid-1900s. I put together some of the most useful resources here to keep everything in one place.

Maps

City Directories

List of Philly directories online

Another list

City directories on IA

Other Stuff

]]> Evaluating New Genealogy Services /evaluating-new-genealogy-services/ Mon, 12 Feb 2024 22:20:18 +0000 https://findthedash.wordpress.com/?p=23 In my early days of doing genealogy research and building out my family tree, I was anxious to try every new service and tool that popped up. I was uploading GEDCOMs everywhere if I was going to be able to get a different view or analysis of my tree.

These days, not as much. I still get excited about seeing new services and tools, but I’m also much more cognizant that not only may this company not be around two years from now, but that I really need to understand how my data is being used and protected.

There are now a series of questions I go through before deciding whether I want to try out a service:

  • Is there a full export capability? If not, how much time do I want to spend putting my data into a system that could shut down without a way of getting my hard work out of it. I ask myself, “What would happen if this service shut down without notice? How painful would that be for me? Would I be able to continue to my work elsewhere without much interruption?”
  • If you can upload a GEDCOM as a source file for a tree, are you able to simply re-upload a new GEDCOM and info will remain updated or do you need to delete and start fresh? For instance, Ancestry lets you upload a GEDCOM file but if your primary tree is in different software, you need to re-upload a GEDCOM as a new tree each time. This requires also re-keying the description and re-sharing your tree with people. Note that you can sync you tree via certain desktop software to certain services, but I keep the canonical version of my tree on my desktop software.
  • Can my tree be completely private except for select people? What steps do they take to protect the data? Is end-to-end encryption offered? Two-factor authentication?
  • What are the sharing options? Does family need to create an account to view? Can sharing be easily revoked, either by removing a user or changing the sharing password?
]]> Telling Stories with Genealogy Services /telling-stories-with-genealogy-services/ Thu, 08 Feb 2024 21:26:50 +0000 https://findthedash.wordpress.com/?p=36 One of the ongoing challenges with a family tree is telling your family’s story with it. Yes, you can have all manner of dates, locations, and other assorted facts, perhaps even with some scattered photos or notes, but none of those things really tell the stories… the tales about your ancestor that have been passed down through the generations or funny stories about an eccentric aunt or uncle.

A few potential services I’m noting here to investigate later…

The same standard questions apply…

…

If you’re feeling really ambitious and DIY…

I’ve always had a public version of my tree available on places like MyHeritage and Ancestry in order to find matching relatives in other trees. However, there was information I was OK sharing with family, but not the public, like personal stories, audio and video recordings, and other personal details. So, a while back, I decided to set up a private site for just my family that would have a copy of my tree including living people, a collection of stories about individuals and families, a blog that summarized my research, a section for photos I’d started scanning, and a lot of other things.

The method I used is outlined below and is really only recommended for folks willing to install some software on a server (that you need to keep up-to-date), develop a workflow, and maybe do some coding. If you’re comfortable with a basic LAMP set-up, you could do this.

What I set up was this:

  • The site was hidden behind authentication so access would be limited to those I shared it with. This also kept it out of seach engines.
  • For the blog, stories, and main site navigation I used a self-hosted WordPress blog with a custom child-theme that I wrote (initially I used Anchor CMS but decided to switch to WordPress since I was so familiar with it).
  • For the family tree, I used HuMo-gen, which imports data and photo references from a GEDCOM file. It’s not perfect and I like some of the alternatives, but it did the trick for serving up tree visualizations, ancestor profile pages, and basic reports.
  • For the photo album I used a heavily modified version of a PHP photo album script that pulls metadata from a Google Sheet with extensive detail on each photo that I scanned. My process for photo scanning and cataloging was/is a bit complicated.
  • I started on (but never finished) a custom document management system because I didn’t like any of the current solutions. It stored document metadata in a database and allows me to store transcriptions and notes as well as tag individuals in each document using permanent IDs that are assigned by the desktop software I use.
  • Links to Google docs of my in-progress family history books so family can follow their progress.
  • A custom Google map highlighting where different families resided over time.
  • There was also an accompanying private Facebook group.

A couple of years ago, though, this got to be too much to maintain and I pulled the site down. I still have the Facebook group and it’s my current primary method for sharing stories and research, as flawed as it is.

]]> Audio Asset Management for Family Historians /audio-asset-management-for-family-historians/ Tue, 06 Feb 2024 21:30:01 +0000 https://findthedash.wordpress.com/?p=49 A surprising thing: there aren’t really any personal-focused audio asset managers out there.

Yeah, music managers a-plenty, but thinking for managing stuff you’ve recorded on your phone, etc. Something like this, but not commercially-focused: https://www.sourceaudio.com/catalog-manager/

And Tropy is fantastic for documents, but doesn’t support audio yet (it may in the future).

The ideal service wouldn’t need to be complicated: name, filename, description, date, tagged people/topics, automated-but-editable timecoded transcription, and a snappy player (preferably synced with the transcription a la Google Recorder).

Google Recorder actually does a pretty decent job, but is limited to Pixel devices and lacks some pretty simple organization features like folders or tags. And searching only applies to the current file; there is no way to search the transcripts across your recordings.

There are plenty of DAMs where this content could fit: museum collections databases, etc. It looks like the professional audio-specific ones I see are for game development, radio, TV, etc. I, of course, approach this from a family history standpoint primarily, but it would be useful for any interview-based project or set of non-music personal recordings.

Other services to investigate:

]]>