Presentation I gave at the SORT Conference in 2011. A historical perspective of how family history has evolved over time using mileposts from my own life.

1. The Evolution of
Technology and
Family History
Ben Baker

2. 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

3. 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

4. Words of Wisdom from Mom
“Computers were invented to do genealogy.”
Ruth Ann Baker (aka Ben’s Mom)

5. Areas of Acceleration
• Growth in the number of temples
• Technological innovations
• Technology applications to family history work

6. 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)

7. 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.

8. 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)

9. 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

10. 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

11. 2005
• 122 Temples worldwide
• First beta release of
new.familysearch.org
• Cloud storage and
computing appearing
• Facebook was a year old

12. 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

13. 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
• ???

14. Growth in Temples

15. 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

16. My-Tree-itus to The Book
Working together in Our Tree
• Reduces temple duplication
• Minimizes research re-work
Pre-1984 1984 1999 2005
My Tree Our Tree The Book

17. Availability of Records
Individual Archives Family History Centers At Home

18. 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.

19. 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

20. Indexing
http://indexing.familysearch.org
Makes it possible to easily find
people in records
Anyone can help – great for youth

21. 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.”

22. State of Family Member Submission
• Typical ward at 2.7% for
year
• Red = person sitting in
sacrament meeting who
has submitted name to
temple

23. Increasing Member Temple Submissions
• Ward has structured
program
• Monthly ward council
reports
• New members assigned
• Class > 3 months
• 3+ consultants

24. 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.

25. 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)