Cleaning of the Database (pt2) - Rootsweb and Ancestry

I have a new love - Rootsweb (my database) and my PAF software, two windows on my screen. Oh, a whole new world for cleaning the database.

I am not a big fan of Family Tree Maker. I have it, of course. And it's connection to my Ancestry.com membership is handy. Sometimes. Still, I really prefer my Personal Ancestral File from LDS. It's FREE. It's Easy. And it works just the same as Ancestry Family Tree, which I'm still depressed that they discontinued. Btw, is that for real? Does anyone know if it's Really, Truly gone? Cause I can't find it on the web any longer.

Enyhoo... Ancestry has it's place. It does. While I'd rather not pay for genealogical information, it's not a soap-box I'm willing to rant about tonight.

So... My new favorite thing....
I upload my database to Rootsweb. Instead of having 10,000 pages on my personal website, it just makes more sense to have a link to a free family tree... Rootsweb is by far my favorite.

Rootsweb is also tied in with Ancestry, so each individual listing - if Ancestry can find it - gives you search results to Ancestry throughout the Rootsweb database.

This is the best help for cleaning up the database!
I open one window with MY database on Rootsweb. Which has the links to Ancestry.
And then another window of my PAF database.

I can look right at my notes and sources on my rootsweb pages, find oddities, old information, and of course, Ancestry links... and update in my PAF at the same time. It's So much easier than having to click on the Sources and Notes for each individual person - not sure what I'm going to find - cause Rootsweb has it all listed right there.

Of course this means that I've been uploading new databases to Rootsweb every day this week.
But... I don't have a job. And the baby is still taking two naps a day. I have time :-)

If you have an ancestry membership and upload to Rootsweb, this is, so far, the easiest way that I've found to start with cleaning the database. It's at least showing me the weak links, and immediate connections to cleaning up Notes and Sources. Ooh... I've got a long list to build on. But you've gotta start somewhere.

Online Resources - We Relate

In an attempt to learn more about FREE online genealogical resources, I picked up the latest Family Tree Magazine, which lists 101 Best Free Websites for Tracing Your Roots. The list is divided into regional sections and different genealogical resources. Some are clear: Rootsweb, USGenWeb, for example; sites I already use profusely. I might get around to writing a review of those sites one of these days.

For now, I'm exploring (and registering) with sites I've never seen visited before.

This is not a full review. Please do not treat it as such. These are simply MY opinions, upon first visiting the sites.

We Relate
Taken from the website: "WeRelate is a free public-service wiki for genealogy sponsored by the Foundation for On-Line Genealogy in partnership with the Allen County Public Library. It is the world's largest genealogy wiki with pages for over 1,800,000 people and growing. WeRelate is currently in beta. It is supported by volunteers and your tax-deductible donations."

On first glance, this appears to be an invaluable genealogical resource. I created my account, Thefamilyorchard (as always) and ran a few simple searches.
LOOPS, is always the first (as it is MY surname, and often one that does not have a lot of information).

Immediately came 2 results: both pertaining to Frederick Loops (who remains "unknown" to most of the world) and his marriage to Kate Cromartie. This was from a gedcom uploaded from "dougcouch" who is "watching" his submissions. Apparently this means, IF I make changes to his uploaded information, he will be sent an email clarifying that thefamilyorchard made an update to his page.
Essentially, we are working together on the same tree.

Immediately, I love this idea. We are working together, to fulfill one online tree. I was able to click on "unknown Loops" and change the information to Frederick, his vital information, and his parents. This is Great!

I will need to play around with this site in great detail when I have more time, to see how this unification of ONE online tree really works. Because you can upload your own gedcom, I'm not confident how duplicates are removed - is that even possible? A quick search into LOVEALL proved there are many duplicates. So.... I'm not encouraged.

Another difficulty is that the available upload is only 5,000 people. I don't know about you, but I have 20K more than 5,ooo people in my database. I'll have to find a solution to this - perhaps uploading multiple gedcoms for individual families?

All in all, I'm off to a great start playing with We Relate. We will see how it continues and I will certainly keep you updated on my experience as it unfolds.

What I Do

I picked this up from Geneabloggers. Read here for more information and to see what other Geneabloggers do.

This is a GREAT idea to share what we need to accomplish the research we perform. I have already learned so much from others! I am not listing much on my virus protection, just simply because I don't want it to be TOO easy to be hacked. If you're curious about how to protect your computer, leave me a comment and I'll respond.

* Hardware:
ACER Aspire Laptop
Custom built Tower
2 Dell flatscreen monitors
Netgear Wireless Router

* External storage:
320G external drive (Costco, $99)
Various USB flash drives of different sizes

* Online storage: Picasa photos. No online storage

* Backup: DOS script twice daily backup

* Firewall: not telling :-)

* Virus protection: not telling :-)

* Spyware: Adaware, Spybot

* File cleaner: Various

* Printer: HP Photosmart

* Phone: Samsung (an oldie). I don't need emails and daily feeds to my phone yet. I'm easy enough to find :-)

* Mobile media: iPod Nano

* Music player: WinAmp, iTunes, Windows Media Player, accordingly

* Car audio: Stock

* eBook Reader:None. Me like books with paper and no batteries

* Browser:Mozilla Firefox

* Blog:Blogger

* RSS:None

* FTP:Dreamweaver, CuteFTP, accordingly

* Text editor: NotePad, MS Office, Email

* Graphics: Photoshop, Picasa

* Screen capture: Print Screen + Paste (into Paint)

* Social media: Facebook

* Social bookmarking:None

* Social profile:None

* URL shortener: tinyURL

* Office suite: 2007 Pro (Outlook, Word, Excel, PowerPoint, Publisher, Access). And yes, I use them all. yeesh!

* E-mail: Outlook, Yahoo!, Gmail

* Calendar: Outlook

* Accounting: Excel

* PDF generator: MS Office, Photoshop

* Genealogy database: Personal Ancestry File 5.2.18, Family Tree Maker, various online trees

* Genealogy tools: Maps, Books, Journals, Clerks of Court, various online Genealogical society submissions

* Other tech stuff: That's about all she wrote. I use what I need; haven't found a need for a lot of the high-tech gadgets yet.