Find-a-grave’s New Feature

Well, folks, findagrave.com just keeps getting better and better for the genealogist! I went to the site today after not logging on to it for a while and I noticed a new twist to the family links option that they added a while back. I guess I should back up here a bit. When I first started using find-a-grave, if you wanted to have a link from one memorial to another (say husband to wife or child to parent), you needed to embed html-style links in the bio. A visitor to the site would then be able to click on the link and go directly to the other memorial. This worked, but it took some effort to add the html tags.

Then a little while ago, they added a unique id number that prints out on the bottom of each memorial page. You could then cut and paste the id number to a new field called ‘parent links’ and hot-link to the parents memorials. Well, now they’ve expanded and improved upon the linking. Not only can you link to parents, but also to spouse(s). In addition, the new family link also does link-back. What this means, is that if from the husband’s memorial you add a link to the wife’s, her memorial automatically gets a link back to the husband. Very nice and quite a time-saver! In addition, if you link to a parent’s memorial, the parent’s page now puts a link-back to the child! Currently it only works in one direction, meaning you have to add a parent link to the child – you cannot add children links to parents, they can only be generated. But that’s okay. All in all, it’s a great way to click around through relatives without having to do searches. This is such a great feature that as time permits, I think I will go back and update my memorials with the family links!!

Ancestry subscription – To Renew or Not?

Well my ancestry.com subscription expires in a couple of weeks, and I have to make the decision of whether to renew it or not. With a list price for renewal of the US Deluxe Membership at $155.40, I am thinking I will probably drop it – at least for a while. (The World Membership, priced at all but $300, isn’t even an option I would consider.) If their price point was closer to $100, the decision would be more difficult.

Everyone’s situation is different – both in their personal financial situation and in the benefit ancestry databases bring to their research goals. For me, ancestry’s current price tag outweighs its benefits. I only ever seem to find relevant information in a few of their collections, and actually I mostly just use the US census.

I’ll probably re-evaluate the situation once I have more time to research, but for now they’ve priced themselves out of the market (at least for me).

Setting Modest Research/Posting Goals

First, I just want to wish anyone who comes across this blog a very Happy 2009!!

Now, for a little lamenting. It’s happening again – too many other things are going on and I’ve been neglecting both my blog and website, not to mention my genealogy research. Since the projects and activities that are taking up the time aren’t ending anytime soon, I’ve been thinking that I need to think smaller. Instead of long, involved posts, maybe some shorter ones. Instead of trying to put more surname research pages on my website or do some major re-designing (which is something I’ve been considering), I will try to add just a few new things (obits, will transcription, etc) to families already on my site.  Instead of planning a big, day-long research trip, maybe a quick trip to a local cemetery – weather permitting. To that end, today I added about 6 more Evans obituaries to my website. Not a huge number, but just maybe what someone is searching for! Who knows. I’ll try to continue with the small, but steady pace…

That’s my genealogy goal for now.  We’ll see how it goes.