Wednesday, August 20, 2008

News at Ancestry.com

Harriet Hoffman sent this good news along to us. She has done monumental work on a couple books on her family and is happy the "Books" feature will be reinstated in future editions of Family Tree Maker software:
"From my special source who is at the IAJGS Conference in Chicago: Last night, a special Jewishgen/Ancestry program was held to announce the new partnership between the two organizations. There will be a link between Ancestry and JG. After that, Ancestry gave a live demonstration of their databases which included copying data, photographs, maps, etc. from an Ancestry.com database into Family Tree Maker. The net result was a BOOK. The pages in the book even turned on the screen. FTM 2009 will be available in about a month and will be free to registered users of FTM 2008."
I don't know if the "Books" feature as we've known it (different from Ancestry Press) will be included with the 2009 FTM or not, but I'm confident it will eventually be released. See below. (Donna)

And from DearMyrtle's blog http://blog.dearmyrtle.com/:
"CHICAGO – Aug. 19, 2008The Generations Network, Inc., parent company of Ancestry.com, and JewishGen, a non-profit organization dedicated to researching and promoting Jewish genealogy and an affiliate of the Museum of Jewish Heritage – A Living Memorial to the Holocaust, today announced a partnership designed to provide easier online access to millions of important Jewish historical documents.
For the first time ever, those interested in researching Jewish ancestry will be able to search JewishGen's databases on Ancestry.com, taking advantage of Ancestry.com's powerful search technologies, including tree hinting and the ability to search all JewishGen databases through one simple interface. The agreement will also give researchers the ability to make connections within family trees and to perform broader searches – searching JewishGen's databases in combination with the other 7 billion names and 26,000 databases available on Ancestry.com. In addition, visitors will be able to network with millions of Ancestry.com members to connect with others interested in Jewish genealogy and discover distant relatives."

^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^
Getting back to the "Books" feature of Family Tree Maker 2006 or 16. I found this on this from a year ago on the Ancestry Search Blog http://ancestorsearch.blogspot.com/search/label/AncestryPress ... concerning the lack of the "Books" feature in the 2008 version and the "promise" to include "Books" in a future FTM release.

Ancestry Search Blog: Friday, August 10, 2007

Family Tree Maker 2008 Beta Reports and Books

Books

When I downloaded the first FTM2008 beta, the program said that books were "coming soon". In the latest beta, the books are through the free Ancestry Press which is also in beta. This makes the books in FTM 2008 beta quite different from the books produced from FTM16.

With AncestryPress, you design customized pages online and print them at home. Since these books are so different from previous versions of FTM, you might want to head over to take a look at AncestryPress and give it a try. You don't have to have the FTM2008 beta to try AncestryPress. If you have a tree at the Ancestry.com site, you can create a book at AncestryPress from that. With AncestryPress, you create pages of the book from your own design or one of the design templates provided. You will find individual timelines, family group sheets, military draft cards, census records, and passenger list records templates. Here is a look at the templetsI think the AncestryPress templates will make very attractive books.

There are disadvantages I see to books from Ancestry Press. Because the books are so different from older versions of FTM16, these FTM16 and older Books do not transfer to FTM2008. At least, I couldn't get mine to transfer. If you have a lot of complicated books already created in older versions of FTM, this is a consideration. FTM tech support have been telling callers that FTM 16 style books will be available in a later FTM release. To me that means that they will be continuing to work on 2008. Another consideration is that AncestryPress books are designed online so someone with a dial-up connection may have difficulty creating the books.

1 comment:

Donna Hague Wendt said...

I've added this comment to the current blog entry because Jan 2008 is a long way back (Donna Wendt)24 Aug 08:
Hi, Donna,
I know I am adding this to a January 2008, but wasn't sure where to put it.
Your readers may be interested in Tracing the Tribe - The Jewish Genealogy Blog, http://tracingthetribe.blogspot.com, which was named as "Best for Jewish Researchers" by Family Tree Magazine's Best 101 Gen Sites for 2008.
The blog covers many topics related to Jewish genealogy including books, events, news, conferences, meetings and more.
Best wishes,
Schelly Talalay Dardashti
Tracing the Tribe - The Jewish Genealogy Blog
http://tracingthetribe.blogspot.com