The Family Tree
By Terence L. Day
Terence L. Day, genealogist and journalist, is on the Washington State University faculty. He welcomes e-mail at genealogy@moscow.com, or regular mail in care of the Tri-City Herald City newsroom, P.O. Box 2608, Tri-Cities, WA 99302-2608.
Genealogy Software Springboard a great place to start
This story was published Jan. 5, 1997
During the holidays, a friend called long distance from a shopping mall in Salt Lake City. He wanted advice on what genealogy software to buy for his IBM-type computer.
Friends and readers often make the same dangerous assumption, which is that I know something about genealogy software. It's true, I have used several. I've even reviewed a few products in this column, but I'm far from an expert.
Being an expert on all the genealogy software available for computerphiles would be a full-time job, and I insist on spending some time actually doing genealogy. But I'm always glad to share my ignorance.
Too bad I hadn't discovered Karen Basile's Genealogy Software Springboard on the World Wide Web before my friend's call. It wouldn't have changed my advice, but I could have sounded much more authoritative.
The genius in Karen's Web page lies in collecting genealogists' comments about various software products. Computer software is written and reviewed by computer experts who live in a different universe than genealogists, most of whom are computer clodhoppers. What could be more helpful than knowing what other "real people" think about the software they use?
Karen owns Secretarial Office Services in Lambertville, Mich. She began searching her family's roots about two years ago and quickly ran smack into the problem that bedevils so many genealogists: What genealogy software program is best?
As she sought advice on the topic, the need for something like Genealogy Software Springboard became obvious. So she created it.
Genealogy Software Springboard lists user comments on 14 genealogy programs. Information is organized by software, not by feature. Karen doesn't permit "bashing." She only posts constructive comments - pro or con. Basic specifications are listed for each program, information such as computer system requirements and that kind of stuff, which falls generally under the heading of necessary evil. You have to know it.
Next, Karen lists positive comments, followed by negative comments. For instance, one of the pros listed for Ancestral Quest is the program's ability to latch onto your Personal Ancestral File database and use it. All changes are saved back to the PAF database.
Negative comments include inability to create focus lists and insufficient provisions to record documentation of your sources.
Alphabetically, here's the software on the Genealogy Software Springboard when I checked it recently: Ancestral Quest, Brothers Keeper for Windows, Cumberland Family Tree, Family Matters, Family Origins, Family TreeMaker, Family Treasures, Family Fathering, The Master Genealogist for DOS, The Master Genealogist for Windows, Personal Ancestral File, Reunion, Roots IV and Visual Roots.
These, of course, are but a few of the software applications available for genealogists. I believe the total number runs well above a hundred; but these are the more popular ones.
So what advice did I give my friend?
The same advice I give all beginners in computerizing genealogy who use IBM-type computers. I tell them the matter is a highly personal one. Opinions will vary. For me, as for a number of genealogical friends, no one program does the job.
I do data entry on Personal Ancestral File, software written by the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints. It provides for information about vicarious baptisms and other religious ordinances performed in LDS temples. This, of course, is important to Mormon genealogists; but the feature can be turned off so it won't annoy genealogists who don't want it.
Data entry on every Windows genealogy program I've tried is cumbersome. They are designed for the nontypists of the world who aren't comfortable with keyboards. Most also don't give prompts for all four geographic designators: city, county, state and nation. The result, I'm sure, is that a lot of users omit the county.
Unfortunately, PAF forms are right out of the digital dark ages. Oh, they are fine for function, but ugly isn't too strong an adjective to describe their appearance. So I also use Ancestral Quest, which is unique in that it literally latches onto a PAF database and uses it. (It also will create its own database if you're not using it as an add-on for PAF, and as Windows applications go, it's pretty good.) Ancestral Quest has the best forms I've seen.
This combination - data entry and some other functions in PAF and printing through Ancestral Quest - lets me have my cake and eat it too. And that's what I usually recommend to folks who can afford to buy two software packages to do one job.
If you're interested in what users think of various genealogy software applications, hook up to the World Wide Web and cruise on over to http://www.toltbbs.com/ %7Ekbasile/software.html. If you do, you'll find a link to Karen's Genealogy Sources, another interesting and valuable Web page with links to even more interesting and valuable.
But wait.
Don't forget to save some time to do genealogy.
A person could turn cruising genealogy Web pages into a major hobby all by itself.