I love technology.....

....and what the church is doing to help us with family history work. I mentioned a while ago that I am turning into the old lady in your ward that is the family history specialist. My brother, Shea, works with the family history department sometimes and provides them computer hardware and storage that they are using for the digitizing of the microfiche records. He's known about some of these tools for years, but for us newbies, here's a few cool tools to check out if you haven't already.

• Indexing work. Digitizing scanned microfiche records. You can help. Here's the link. Get signed up doing some indexing today. http://www.familysearchindexing.org/en/index.jsp
• New PAF. User friendly. You should start gathering info from your aging relatives and consolidating them into a master PAF file for each of your family lines that you can share with your family so you are all working together and not duplicating. Here's where to download it. (down on the right side of the page. ) http://www.familysearch.org/Eng/default.asp
• PAF Insight. Ohana software http://www.ohanasoftware.com/ came out a few years ago with a software program that compares your own family history records (in PAF) with the temple records that list the ordinances that have been completed in the temple. It loads directly into your PAF program under the "tools" menu. It shows your personal PAF records on the left side of the screen and displays the closest matching temple records on the right along with the % probablity that they are the same person. (over 90% is surely a match down to under 60% is probably not a match, but could be....get it?) Then you go through, updating your file with the information from the temple records thus avoiding duplicating the temple work for these family members. It's also valuable to see what other information those that have worked on that have have found, so you can add it to your file. I downloaded it a few weeks ago and have checked 1000 names so far on the Taylor/ Mayberry side of my family and was only able to find a handful of individuals who lacked ordinance work.
• New Temple Ready program at the family history libraries. The church is also using a duplication check process in it's temple ready program (the program you use when you go to have the temple cards made from your PAF record) that will not allow a card to be issued for someone who has already received the work. So using PAF Insight upfront, will save some embarrassment when you go to the family history center to have cards printed.

It's amazing what we can do these days with search technology and how effective and easy it is. A very little computer literacy and web familiarity goes a long, long way. It seems we are just at the beginning of what will be some pretty exciting advances.