In this post, I want to pose some thoughts concerning the
evolution of genealogy, as opposed to the genealogy of evolution, and consider
how my recent visit to RootsTech 2016 may have tempered my prior views.
When asked how genealogy has progressed in recent decades,
many people would cite the increased availability of information through the
digitisation of records and other sources. But what about the process of
genealogy: the methodology, attitudes, and tools?
Figure 1 - Tree of Life, Ernst Haeckel (1834–1919).[1]
A shining light in genealogy is the Genealogical
Proof Standard (GPS). Although controversially using the term “proof” in
its name, this is essentially a guide to ensuring thorough research, and of reaching sound conclusions. It is not a
method (as sometimes thought), and not even a step-wise recipe — hence,
its five parts being described as “elements” rather than “steps”. The earliest
mention of the GPS by name was by Helen F. M. Leary in "Evidence
Revisited — DNA, POE and GPS," OnBoard 4
(January 1998): pp.1–2, 5, and the text of that article may be found online at http://www.bcgcertification.org/skillbuilders/learyevidence.html.
Although the actual wording of this standard has undergone a number of
refinements before reaching its current form, the underlying principles can be
traced back to at least the 1930s, and probably the late 19th
Century. It is hardly surprising, therefore, that those same elements (with
minor wording changes) would apply to any field of research, including those
outside of the fields of genealogy and history, and including those that do not
use the term “proof” in this manner. The expression of these principles was
designed to help all genealogists, not just professionals, or even budding
professionals, but also the many newcomers to this increasingly popular pursuit.
Another major contribution that has been embraced by the
wider community is Evidence Explained:
Citing History Sources from Artifacts to Cyberspace (EE) by Elizabeth Shown
Mills. Now in its third edition, this mammoth book is sometimes viewed as a
recipe book for source citations, and is unfairly criticised when the one you
really want is unlisted. However, the book is really about evidence analysis,
and the first couple of chapters guide the reader through the things they need
to know — the principles, conventions, and requirements — to be empowered to do
their own analysis and cite their own sources. There is a lot to learn, here,
but it’s well worth the effort. Although not the first such book, it may be
argued that this particular one set the scene for the more recent works designed
to help genealogists make a better job of what they love doing.
What about software genealogy? You would think that this
technologically-equipped field would be contributing greatly to our advances,
but I have not seen this yet. I have previously been very critical of the
limited, and rather skewed, picture that software paints of genealogy. With a
few notable exceptions, tools are still focused on family trees, conclusions,
and form-fill data entry. Part of the problem is that such tools are produced by
companies governed by commercial forces, including commercial constraints, and
if not commercial then at least proprietary. In other words, genealogy
has no software team of its own, and is often subjected to software written by
non-genealogists. This contrasts sharply with written material such as books
and online publications.
This year, I was lucky enough to attend RootsTech 2016 — my
first, but hopefully not my last — and found it to be an incredible experience.
Meeting all those people that I only knew by name or profile-picture would have
been enough on its own, but the overwhelming message of this year’s RootsTech
was of particular importance to me: stories and memories. I have long bemoaned
the industry’s focus on lineage at the expense of stories and other forms of
narrative, and this limitation was a major force in me developing my own
software. As Steve Rockwood, the new CEO of FamilySearch, said in his Wednesday
Innovator Summit keynote, it’s less about “facts of the chart” and more about
“stories of the heart”. His emphasis was primarily on preserving stories for
future generations but this new focus still gets my vote.
A particularly moving presentation that demonstrated the
power of stories was the Friday keynote by David Isay, founder of Storycorps. The premise is for two
close people to record a 40-minute question-answer session between them as
though it was their last chance to say something important. David presented a
number of these recordings in the keynote and they were
so moving that I found myself discretely reaching for my pack of tissues, only
to realise that from the folks around me there was an inordinate amount of
gentle coughing, nose-blowing, and dust-in-the-eye maintenance. The amazing
thing about these stories is that they
told themselves; they didn’t need any hype or advertising, and that’s just
how stories should be. Whether we’re telling personal stories or recounting
historical ones that we may have researched then that potential to tug on the
heart strings will always be there. David was obviously aware of this as his
introduction was a mere 3.5 minutes before the first story. Perfect!
I strongly believe that this same emotional connection can
be found in descriptions of long-passed events , even if we only know of them
through research rather than personal experience. One such case took me
unawares while writing a narrative report entitled Like
Father, Like Son. This contained a description of a house fire in 1937 Nottingham,
England, that destroyed a family and their youngest children. The newspaper
reports contained eye-witness accounts of a young girl at the window of the top-most
of the three levels, but they had to watch as she was consumed because of the
ferocity of the flames. The firemen later recounted their grim discoveries of
her body, and of her mother and another daughter on the middle level. Housing,
then, was largely back-to-back terraces, and many neighbours were related or
worked together — much more so than in modern cities — and everyone knew their
neighbours, whether good or bad. I was writing about the out-pouring of grief,
and of the thousands of people who lined the streets for the funeral procession,
when I reached the part describing the coffin of the youngest girl being
carried by her school friends. I was so choked that I really had to take a
break. Since publishing that account, I have been contacted by direct
descendants of the family who thanked me for solving a mystery because no one
in the family wanted to talk about those events when they were young, and
eventually there was no one left who had experienced them.
I recently summarised the status of my STEMMA research project
in a three-part article on my blog, and the second
part presented a view of narrative
genealogy that embraced story telling, narrative reports, proof arguments, and
transcription (of both old and new material). I believe that this seamless inclusion
is necessary for useful genealogy, and for micro-history in general. So how did
this view tally with the views and products I encountered at RootsTech?
I talked to one high-profile software developer who was very
keen on the concept of semantic mark-up (as discussed in my article), but his
working constraints currently made it difficult to justify any associated
development. Looking around the booths in the Expo Hall was informative; many
of the new vendors openly admitted that they were not genealogists, and the
designs for sharing memories appeared to demonstrate more than a little
influence from existing social media. Selling the idea of sharing memories
by alluding to products such as Instagram is smart, but this is different from
designing a product using a similar paradigm. For those memories to become
essential parts of our family history, and to make them shareable, searchable,
and navigable on the Web, then someone needs to look at the nuts-and-bolts of
how the data is be stored, and how it's going to be found by search
engines such as Google.
As I write this, findmypast
have announced a partnership deal with Twile, a
Web site that organises your stories and memories according to a timeline, and
it will be interesting to see how they view potential integration. Twile was
placed third in the RootsTech Innovator Showdown, but was also the people’s
choice. So what are my arguments against simply publishing videos, recordings,
and images on some “social history” Web site? Well, not all stories are going
to be private; sometimes you want them to be found by the families of other
people who were there, whether they’re related to you or not, and irrespective
of how they were referenced in your story. Not all stories will relate to one
particular event that can be neatly placed on a timeline, or hung off someone’s
tree. Essentially, the data model by which the stories should be organised is
not trivial, and it requires the bigger picture to be considered.
When asked about their data
model, those representatives that were aware of the term talked about how
the resources (videos, images, etc) were organised on a Web server. None had
organised the information according to real-world relationships, as opposed to
operational ones, and none had any integration with other genealogical or
family history information, such as lineage, places, events, sources, and so
on. To me, given both my background and my personal requirements, this approach
is several keys short of a piano, but
to recognise the requirement itself is a huge step in the right direction. I
just hope that the commercial momentum, and the desire to get there first with
a killer product, isn’t at the
expense of a more-considered design that gives the end-user greater scope and
potential.
Most of the representatives expressed some interest in
the use of mark-up, and in any guidance, best practices, or data standards that
might emerge. Of particular note were Legacyscribes,
Pass it down, and kindex, all of whom wanted to know more. In fact,
Legacyscribes already had a basic semantic mark-up scheme in place, and I was
thrilled to see it demonstrated.
On the subject of transcription, things were a little
quieter. Most listened as I explained how finding information in a recorded
story needed more than some simple tags applied externally to the associated digital
file, but it was still viewed very much as a service rather than an essential
cohesive feature. There was clearly a lack of knowledge about subtleties of
transcription, and how it would apply to historical documents as well as to modern
ones, and to digital recordings. Only two were entirely dismissive, both of the
opinion that it just required someone with a word-processor. Although I didn’t
ask at the time, I would wager that none had heard of TEI: Text Encoding Initiative.
To a lesser extent, I asked about the process of collaboration
in genealogy. I have also criticised the current concept of a unified family
tree at What
to Share, and How, and presented ideas for crowd-sourced types of
collaboration at Collaboration
Without Tears, and for tree-based approaches that embrace alternative
conclusions, authorial control, and automatic attribution at What
to Share, and How – Part II.
Just before I left for RootsTech, a new development project emerged
called Trepo, and this has since
grabbed the attention of several software developers. It claims to support
alternative views in a unified tree, and although it’s unclear how complex this
might appear to an average end-user, it’s great that someone is thinking about
this.
One of the booths where I questioned the practicality of a
unified tree was the one for Geni. In 2012 Geni
was acquired by MyHeritage.com and their
World Family Tree contrasts with the user-owned trees of MyHeritage. The representative
vehemently denied that there were any conflicts or differences of opinion that
could not be resolved by a moderator. To ignore the very real “wars” that exist
on such trees, and the losses incurred when someone else takes down more than
they should, is rather unprofessional, but to believe that evidence analysis is
a mechanical process, and that there will always be one unambiguous
winner that can be decided by some third-party moderator is just naïve;
the same evidence may support more than one view of the truth. I could see that
this conversation was doomed. I wanted to point out that when recounting our
first-hand personal experiences, or presenting information given directly to us
by a family member, then no one else has a right to change it, and so his suggestion
of “giving up control” was ill-founded. The stories and memories would be our
recollections, expressed in our words, and this was a fundamental message
of the conference. However, I was shouted down so I went and got a coffee
instead.
In summary, it is high time that genealogy came down from
the trees, and walked upright
alongside history, but it will not be today.
[1] "Tree of Life", by German biologist and naturalist Ernst Heinrich Philipp
August Haeckel (1834–1919). Image
in the public domain. Copy obtained from Wikimedia Commons (https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Tree_of_life_by_Haeckel.jpg
: accessed 11 Feb 2016).
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