Ben Baker

The Evolution of

Technology and

Family History

Thinking vs. Doing

• According to a 2008 BYU study

– 95.9% of members think that doing family history

is very important

– 84.6% of members spend less than one hour per

month doing family history

Mission Statements

Family History Department

• Free spirits from spirit prison

• Broaden member participation

• Prepare the foundations of the book

Product Engineering Division

Create, deploy, and manage technology solutions that

accelerate the freeing of spirits, turning of hearts, and

order in the records

Words of Wisdom from Mom

“Computers were invented to do genealogy.” Ruth Ann Baker (aka Ben’s Mom)

Areas of Acceleration

• Growth in the number of temples

• Technological innovations

• Technology applications to family history work

1950-51

• Ben’s Dad was baptized at age 23

• Endowed in Logan Temple a year after baptism – Did a lot of temple ordinances in Logan

• 8 Temples worldwide NO temples in California

• Computers took up entire rooms, could only store kilobytes of data and perform thousands of operations/sec

• We sat and hand copied (maybe typed) our family data unto our pedigree charts.

• Church had been microfilming records for 12 years (1938)

1976

• Ben was born

• 16 temples worldwide

• Home personal computers beginning to appear

(Ex. Apple II, Atari 800)

• 5¼ inch floppy disk introduced

• The Family History Library was in the Church Office Building

• Granite Mountain Records Vault completed in 1963

• Still hand copying/typing our family data unto our pedigree

charts and using card catalogs to find records.

1984

• Ben was baptized at age 8

• 32 Temples worldwide

• IBM PC-AT and Apple Macintosh introduced

• Hard disk drives appearing – a few MB for thousands of dollars

• PAF 1.0 for MS-DOS was released

• Family History Library not quite finished (1985)

1995-1997

• Ben on mission

• 47-50 temples worldwide, including Bountiful

• Digital imaging of records hasn’t quite begun (1998) – Still using microfilm/paper

• Internet beginning to be widespread

2000

• Ben graduated from college

• 102 Temples worldwide - exceeding President Hinckley’s challenge

• CDs (700MB) and DVDs (4.7 GB) popular

• PAF 5.0 released (Windows)

• Genealogical databases often on CDs/DVDs or library databases

2005

• 122 Temples worldwide

• First beta release of

new.familysearch.org

• Cloud storage and

computing appearing

• Facebook was a year old

2011

• 134 temples, 12 under construction 14 announced

• Genealogy on prime time TV

• Publicly-traded genealogy company

• Facebook apps to link families

• FamilySearch YouTube channel

• Over 60,000 FamilySearch research wiki articles

• Over 1,000,000 registered users on new.familysearch.org

• Hundreds of millions of images and 2 billion names now available

• Collections worldwide in several languages

• Cloud storage (petabytes of data)

• 200 cameras worldwide digitizing more original documents

Future

• Integration of “new” FamilySearch (tree) with familysearch.org (searching for records/viewing images)

• Linking from person in tree to/from original sources

• All 2.4 million rolls of microfilm will be digitized – much of it indexed and searchable

• More social media collaboration

• ???

Growth in Temples

Technological Growth

• Storage Capacity – kilobytes to petabytes

• Processing Power – thousands to trillions of

operations per second

• Availability – physical archive to home

• Connectedness – worldwide online

community

My Tree Our Tree

My-Tree-itus to The Book

The Book Pre-1984 1984

Working together in Our Tree

• Reduces temple duplication

• Minimizes research re-work

1999 2005

Availability of Records

Individual Archives Family History Centers At Home

Church’s Family History Websites

• http://www.familysearch.org

• Searching for digitized family history records

• http://new.familysearch.org

• Building your portion of the family tree and preparing

ancestor’s names for temple ordinances

• Will be integrated with the main site in a year or so

• http://indexing.familysearch.org

• Launch place to help build indexes of records

• Other services – blogs, wiki, courses, etc.

End “Temple Welfare”

Have had 68% increase in individuals

submitting at least one name of family member

to the temple since launch of new

FamilySearch

Indexing

http://indexing.familysearch.org

Makes it possible to easily find

people in records

Anyone can help – great for youth

End User Experience

“I found out a year ago that I have a terminal illness. I don’t feel well enough to leave my apartment very often, so I have very few opportunities to serve as I would like. Someone in the ward suggested that I try indexing. What a glorious experience it has been! I find that I feel a lot better when I am sitting at my computer doing indexing. At times the spirit is very strong, and the veil seems very thin. I have indexed 84,000 names during the last ten months, and I hope to do many, many more. Thank you for giving me this opportunity to serve.”

State of Family Member Submission

• Typical ward at 2.7% for

year

• Red = person sitting in

sacrament meeting who

has submitted name to

temple

Increasing Member Temple Submissions

• Ward has structured

program

• Monthly ward council

reports

• New members assigned

• Class > 3 months

• 3+ consultants

End User Experiences I was able to find my long lost Grandmother my parents could never find. We were able

to seal her to my Dad and his family in the temple. What a glorious experience!

Searching takes less time than in the archive, is better quality, and I can do it on the

couch at home. I love being able to view actual census records.

I have found my beloved Czech ancestors. I am in tears. This is a miracle! I had no idea

that the church had permission to film in the Czech Republic.

I have spent 30 years researching, and because of this program, I have accomplished

more in the last few months than in all 30 years.

Never Forget the Dead

“I make these plain statements, so that my children, or my children’s children, can trace their genealogy of our dead . . . I felt the responsibility of looking after the dead, as the last words of my father were “Thomas, never forget the dead.” I say the same to my posterity, until all the dead have been redeemed.”

Thomas Briggs, (aka Ben’s 3rd great grandfather)