Help for my academic study on family history researchers

[venelow]

Have done the Survey.

Re Find My Past, does anyone else send in corrections to Parish Records?  I have done so quite a lot in the past but I am now wondering if I should bother.

I kept a note of one I did because it was a date typo. That was in May 2016 and it is still not corrected. At least with Ancestry corrections are available almost immediately and stand along side the original so everyone can make their own evaluation.

Venelow

[Boongie Pam]

Survey done.  Other online sites I couldn't live without are BNS, Irishgenealogy, Scotlandsplaces.

On question 6 it asked how much of my research "is online" well it is nearly 100% but that's only because I spent years at regional records offices, cemeteries , national archives and libraries working with records that are still not online.  So the answer doesn't reflect how much of my combined research is due to online sourcing.

Good luck with your research.

[Rosinish]

Hi Jack,

"*I am mainly focusing on Ancestry.co.uk and ScotlandsPeople.gov.uk so any of your thoughts and experiences with these sites as both novices and experienced users would be very useful"

I haven't done your survey yet but I don't understand how anyone could compare SP with Ancestry?

Can you elaborate please on what your comparisons of those 2 sites consist of?

Could you also name other sites in your comparison list please as an idea?

Annie

[Millmoor]

Survey done.

With an English father and Scottish mother I have used  both Ancestry and Scotland's People a great deal. Although I also subscribe to FindMyPast my preference is for Ancestry, largely because of the fields it offers to interrogate the database, in particular the place of birth option. I also find it more browser friendly - unless I am missing something some of the Scottish records on FindMyPast I  find extremely awkward  to browse through.

I also have to say I personally prefer the "new" Scotland's People to the old for a similar reason to the above - the free search facility means that I feel much more in control of what I am looking for and am much less likely to waste credits.

William

[j4ckmchugh]

Thanks for all the new responses!

[j4ckmchugh]

Hi Jack,

"*I am mainly focusing on Ancestry.co.uk and ScotlandsPeople.gov.uk so any of your thoughts and experiences with these sites as both novices and experienced users would be very useful"

I haven't done your survey yet but I don't understand how anyone could compare SP with Ancestry?

Can you elaborate please on what your comparisons of those 2 sites consist of?

Could you also name other sites in your comparison list please as an idea?

Annie

Hi Annie,

I am a UX design student so, in terms of my own specialism, I am mainly looking at these sites from a web design point of view. Although context is important UX design is not primarily concerned with content but with design of the web furniture such as menus, search, navigation etc. Therefore although ScotlandsPeople is specialist and Ancestry huge and multinational the actual act of searching for records has many design similarities. Plus contrasts are also interesting, raising questions such as: does Ancestry's family tree feature make the research experience nicer there? Does the lack of Ancestry's swarms of American records make searching on ScotlandsPeople a bit simpler and more pleasant? Do credits or subscriptions make for a better research experience? This creates some interesting angles of comparison that just comparing Ancestry and FindMyPast or ScotlandsPeople with IrishGenealogy probably would not.

Best wishes,
Jack

As a specific little example of UX design for those interested/bemused:
Chinese e-commerce website Alibaba has a nice feature where as you type in your email address they offer dropdown selections of the common address suffixes to save you typing in "@gmail.com"
Now this example bears comparison to other new sign-up processes (even on websites that are fairly different)

[iluleah]

Your survey is completed 

I'm only really  interested in websites that show images of the real records, only use FH websites for what they are 'a tool', and they are only one small tool in a whole tool box of resources

[j4ckmchugh]

Thanks again to all of you who took this survey!
(There are still a few days left to do it if you haven't already.)

P.S: For those interested I will close the survey on Friday morning and post the link to the results later so you can see which answers were most popular.

[suey]

Survey completed.  Good luck Jack. 

The larger websites like ancestry and Findmypast can be a little difficult and overwhelming to navigate for novices. It's understandable considering the enormous amount of record sets they cover.
A couple of things I find annoying with Ancestry is the movement of records to maximise profits.. I.e.
Military records which were once free for UK subscriptions now come under another subscription to view the image.
Secondly, when announcing a new set of records, I find it takes ages before they have transcribed and added all or enough records for the search to return successful results.
I don't keep my tree online but I do have a couple of other forums.. one for a one name study and one for a small group of friends who met on another forum which subsequently closed.

I have only searched Scotlands People for a few people but on the whole it's been ok.

I can agree with that. I think it's a disgrace that you now pay again for Military Records the sub is hefty enough as it is.

Both Ancestry and FindMyPast can be cumbersome due solely to the fact that there is so much information now on both sites.