My Commitment to PERSI

You may have noticed (and by the comments and questions coming in via social media, many of you have) that I have been working with the PERSI index quite a bit lately. I made a commitment to myself, and to PERSI, that I would learn to utilize this resource. Is it strange to make a commitment to an index? Perhaps. But I've done it anyway

(Unfamiliar with PERSI? Check out my recent blog post, "Applause! Cheers! Whistles!" on what I learned about PERSI during RootsTech.)

Over the course of the last fifteen years or so, as I've been actively engaged in the obsession that is genealogy, I have occasionally tried to use PERSI through the previous host, HeritageQuest. I've tried, and I've failed. Why? Because I never took the time to really understand what it was, or how it worked. Now that I know better, I'm having a grand old time making all sorts of discoveries! I've been sharing these on my business Facebook page, Ancestral Journeys, and through my Twitter feed, albeit in a more abbreviated fashion. (If you haven't already liked or followed me on Facebook, I'll go ahead and put in the plug for myself: would you do it now? I would greatly appreciate it, and thank you in advance.)

Some of the items I've looked up have just been random whatever-I-think-of-in-the-moment type pieces. Some have been intentional, done with a specific goal or research question in mind. Either way, I am learning more and more how to finesse the system to my benefit. As findmypast.com adds more images to the PERSI collection, I'll be ready to investigate, and will be a pro at utilizing their search platform before the publications I am most interested in come online.

And that is the commitment I made to myself. During Curt Witcher's talk at RootsTech, he was so jazzed up about the material you can find there, that I promised myself I would use it. Regularly and often. When I got home, I decided to look up at least one article every day, five days out of the week. Admittedly, I've missed a few, but three weeks' worth of illness will slow down just about anybody. I'm getting back on track with my health (finally!) and that means I'm getting back on track with my commitment to PERSI, too.

Here's a few of the articles I have found so far:

• "Jamestown Baking Oven of 1600s" published in the William and Mary Quarterly Historical Magazine (Vol 17, Issue 4, Oct 1937).
• "Newcastle H.S. Band Members, ca. 1925" published in Bits and Pieces (Weston, Wyoming, Vol 5, Issue 6, 1969) - as a devoted band member growing up, this one caught my attention for sure! 
• "Best Martin, aka Lena Martin, is Exposed as a Woman in Prison" published in Nebraska History (Vol 90, Issue 1, Spring 2009). 
• "Danville Hist. Excerpt, Gazetteer of State, 1804" published in the Steuben Echoes (Steuben, New York, Mar 1995 issue).

Not just articles, but images too. In one 1912 issue of the New York Genealogical & Biographical Record, I found several family crests. I did not keep them all, just enough to remind me of the great material available through PERSI. If you refer to my post listed above, you will see that I've also been able to locate maps, charts and tables and photographs of various individuals.  

Family Crest, found in a 1912 New York Genealogical and Biographical Record,
via PERSI, on findmypast.com

I would invite you to take a look at the PERSI index now on findmypast.com. The material there may just surprise you. 

Disclaimer: 

I work for findmypast.com. However, I was not asked to write this post, I am not being paid to write this post, and will not benefit in any way at all from this post… other than just sharing the great news about PERSI with my readers. 

Applause! Cheers! Whistles!

I’ll be honest, sitting in a session at RootsTech is not where I expected to hear all of that. But I did, and it was brilliant!


I had a great week at RootsTech, and although I was unable to attend a large quantity of sessions due to other commitments, one that I did get to was Curt Witcher’s talk on PERSI, “PERSI 3.0 The Next Generation of the Periodical Source Index”. I had never seen Mr. Witcher speak before, and that was a treat all on its own; he was full of energy and excitement, and it was absolutely contagious. His subject matter, the recently announced partnership between the Allen County Public Library and findmypast.com, and the progress of how the PERSI project is developing and the goals they have for it, was certainly enough for me to jump up and down. (And I would have, but I was sitting in the very front, and didn't think it was perhaps the most professional thing to do...)


Here’s the scoop.


PERSI, or Periodical Source Index, was created just over twenty years ago by ACPL so that researchers would have a searchable resource for the wonderful articles published on a local level in society and organization newsletters and publications. Good idea, right? If you are not a member of a particular society, you can use the index to determine if anything was ever written about a family line of interest or just about anything else. Very smart.


The project got big – 2.5 million entries big – and although ACPL has other partners in the past, this one with findmypast.com is unique. It is unique because of two key elements: 1) findmypast.com has committed to updating the index every quarter beginning in 2014 (did you know that the index we've all been using forever was last updated in 2009? I didn't, so learning that findmypast.com has already updated the index through 1 Jan 2014 was a big step in the right direction right from the get-go), and 2) findmypast.com has a goal of digitizing all of these articles and putting them online for simple click-through access. 


Disclaimer. Yep, right in the middle of my post.

I work for findmypast.com. There were many surprised to find me in findmypast.com blue working the stand at the conference. However, I was not asked to write this post, I am not being paid to write this post, and will not benefit in any way at all from this post… other than just sharing the great news about PERSI with my readers.


These publications simply have so much information in them, from long winded fully researched and cited family genealogies to maps to cemetery transcriptions. The possibilities are really pretty endless here. So the research that is becoming available to us in a more convenient fashion is really engaging and has the potential to provide many of us with a great deal more information on our ancestors and the social history we all love so much.


Where does the cheering come in? Get to the best stuff already! 


It happened when, about 3/4 of the way through his presentation, Mr. Witcher showed the audience that findmypast.com already has over 7000 images online from the New York Genealogical & Biographical Record! What a great moment, and I am so glad I was there to see it, or I might not have believed it. His grin said it all; how awesome was that?

Screenshot: The New York Genealogical & Biographical Record
as seen on findmypast.com.

And I’ll go ahead and say it; it’s pretty awesome to be involved in a company that is willing to take on a project like this and do it right.


Here's a couple more items I found within the PERSI collection, just to tempt you further... and if this doesn't work, let me know what will. I'll find it. Why? Because I know that this resource is incredible, will be extremely valuable to a great many of us, and because flipping through the pages of the NYG&BR is fun!

All above images are screenshots taken from the findmypast.com PERSI collection

Ancestry.com completes the 1940 US Federal Census Index

From Ancestry.com today:

Ancestry.com Releases Completely Searchable 1940 U.S. Federal Census

A searchable index to 134 million records makes researching family history in the latest available U.S. Census dramatically easier

PROVO, UTAH – (August 3, 2012) – Ancestry.com, the world’s largest online family history resource, is proud to announce that it has completed the records indexing process for the 1940 U.S. Federal Census, which is available at www.ancestry.com/1940census. All 134 million records are now easily searchable by name, date, place of birth and other key information recorded in the census. These records, which are free to search, offer valuable insight for the nearly 90 percent of Americans who either have family members recorded in the 1940 U.S. Census or are in it themselves.

Since the initial release of the 1940 U.S. Census by the National Archives in April, Ancestry.com has progressively published information from this important family history resource state by state. Ancestry.com has made this vital family history information while providing an engaging user experience including the ability to search for maiden names or other family names, often a roadblock when searching records. Additionally, users can make corrections or update information that is incomplete, leading to a better overall database of information.

Assisting in navigation of the 1940 U.S. Census is Ancestry.com’s Interactive Image Viewer, which enables users to easily peruse document pages with simple graphical overlays. The viewer adds highlights, transcriptions and other functionality directly on the Census page. This enables searchers access to small census fields by simply scrolling over them for a pop up that magnifies the information recorded by census takers.  With the ability to zoom in on individual records, these new features dramatically improve the usability of the 1940 U.S. Census, which previously only included images of the paper records. These paper records, handwritten in small entry fields, have traditionally been very hard to read, making the visual enhancements in the Interactive Viewer a huge improvement.

“We are so excited to be publishing our index to the 1940 U.S. Federal Census for free on Ancestry.com,” said Tim Sullivan, CEO of Ancestry.com. “As one of the most anticipated family history resources ever, the 1940 Census is a fantastic way for almost every American to get started making discoveries about their family history as well as a key new resource for so many of our two million existing subscribers.  Experienced through our new Interactive Image Viewer, the stories and discoveries inside the 1940 Census really come to life.”

Users can now find basic information such as their ancestors’ names and where they lived, but also gain more insight about their ancestors’ daily lives. This information includes whether they owned or rented their home, the value of the residence and how many people resided there. For the first time, census takers in 1940 also asked questions specific to income and education. Interestingly, details like prior military service, the ability to read or write, and whether citizens spoke English – all asked in prior censuses – were not asked in 1940.

The entire census can be viewed online at www.ancestry.com/1940census

About Ancestry.com

Ancestry.com Inc. (Nasdaq:ACOM) is the world's largest online family history resource, with approximately 2 million paying subscribers. More than 10 billion records have been added to the site in the past 15 years. Ancestry users have created more than 38 million family trees containing more than 4 billion profiles. In addition to its flagship site www.ancestry.com, Ancestry.com offers several localized Web sites designed to empower people to discover, preserve and share their family history.

Forward Looking Statements

This press release contains forward-looking statements that involve risks and uncertainties that could cause actual results to differ materially from those anticipated by these forward-looking statements. Such risks and uncertainties include our ability to digitize content, to provide desired content to our subscribers, to make our services convenient to use and to otherwise satisfy customer expectations. Information concerning additional factors that could cause events or results to differ materially from those projected in the forward-looking statements is contained under the caption “Risk Factors” in our Quarterly Report on Form 10-Q for the quarter ended June 30, 2012, and in discussions in other of our Securities and Exchange Commission filings. These forward-looking statements should not be relied upon as representing our views as of any subsequent date and we assume no obligation to publicly update or revise these forward-looking statements.