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General => The Common Room => Topic started by: j4ckmchugh on Thursday 27 July 17 21:14 BST (UK)
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Dear History Researchers,
I am a postgraduate student at Kingston University, London. I am currently conducting research into the web design of genealogy websites and how well (or not) they manage to support both novices and experienced researchers. So I would love to hear from:
*Newcomers to family history (or any of you who can reflect on your experiences as newcomers in the recent past- i.e. before the website designs changed too much!)
*Experienced family history researchers
What I Would Like You To Do
*First, take this short online survey. https://www.surveymonkey.co.uk/r/DH6BC3S
*Then let me know your thoughts on how well you think different genealogy records websites support the process of family history research online. Focus on features you like or dislike or ones you think are missing.
*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.
If you want further information, please contact:
Jack McHugh
(*)
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Survey done, but I rarely use Ancestry as it's too expensive for a private sub and I find it's cumbersome to use. I have used Scotland's People, but I don't have much Scottish ancestry so it's not very relevant to me. I have got back to about 1800 or earlier on my English lines, so it's getting more difficult to find convincing evidence of earlier ancestry, esp relying on online data. I'm begining to think I need to explore manorial/parish records which means visits to Record Offices.
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Thanks!
Yes I have my own opinions on both the sites as a novice researcher and web designer (but I don't want to prejudice my data gathering by posting them now!)
I don't know if you could go into any specifics about why you found cumbersome on Ancestry (guess this depends on how recently you've used it).
Yes even with my best (Scottish) line I've found it gets difficult to research beyond the mid-1700s using online sources.
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Why's Ancestry cumbersome? - because it throws up a lot of results, many of which are American biased (I've not got any objection to Americans, just not got any ancestors or present family there!) and I found it quite difficult to filter out the unwanted results. This is something other people complain about with FindMyPast and The Genealogist, but I know my way around those sites much better. I have to admit, I've not used Ancestry for a long while (over 12 months). Maybe I just went off them when they closed down their free offshoot, Mundia!
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I use Ancestry as my main research tool (my online tree is there), and I find it quite easy to limit searches to the area of interest. I also use Scotlands People, and I appreciate the recent change that allows free searches.
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Currently my favourite site is Find My Past. Checking for gaps in my extensive genealogy at present so using them extensively. One comment on ancestry is presumably Americans with ancestry in UK pressing the wrong button and publishing their County Durham coal miner as being from Durham, North Carolina. But that is the user's fault and not ancestry!
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Hi Jack,
My apologies for editing your initial post to remove your email address, but as noted above this is to protect you from spam and other interwebby nasties.
The best way for anyone wishing to contact you is via the Personal Message (PM) facility where you can exchange email addresses and other secure personal information.
To activate your PM system you should reply once more to this topic (just a smiley will do).
I have completed your survey.
Best wishes for your research.
Spades
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Hi,
I've done the survey...
Ancestry is great but has to be tamed first - I am getting better at knowing what to search for in order to avoid loads of American records popping up. It does still have some strange ideas about what might be relevant to me and I have to be very discerning about which records might be relevant.
I have not needed Scotland's People much but it was fascinating when I used it the other day - I was so excited about what was available and just how much information I could get - and how (relatively) inexpensive it was to cross check - well compared to buying certificates down here in England! I find both sites very easy to use - I use Find My Past as well - only because of the 1939 Register and the newspapers - I really don't like that one for some reason - it is not so intuitive but perhaps I don't use it enough.
Liz
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Survey done good luck in your research.
Regards panda
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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.
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I've done the survey.
I forgot to say in that .... I think what is frustrating is that you can do searches of what's been transcribed, but often don't then also have access to an image of the originals, to look for yourself. Sometimes there's stuff in originals that you can see when you're really, really looking, that a transcriber got wrong or omitted. And, it's nice to just see the images and read some of them sometimes, especially those with little notes in the margins.
Also, with results, you don't know what you don't know.... it might show Jonas Findyerman - but you don't know that there are 4 other parishes within 3-4 miles that haven't been transcribed .... so you might think he's the right one... A handy "parish lookup" map with mouseover showing what's available/dates would be handy.... I've been keeping a spreadsheet, but that's not as a map so hard to spot adjacent parishes easily. I know what I mean, not sure I wrote that clearly though :)
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Survey completed :)
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Survey completed :)
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Hi, survey done.
The subscription sites I use are Ancestry (World sub) and Findmypast (UK sub). Personally I prefer Ancestry, it is the first site I subscribed to as a novice (almost 10 years ago) and I found it quite easy to navigate.
I have a couple of gripes though about Ancestry. Firstly, those annoying hints which often throw up results which are clearly not my ancestors - a novice could easily accept these suggestions and follow the wrong family line. Another is the assumption that you are in America. As far as I know there are 15 towns in the world called Birmingham, 14 in America, 1 in the UK. Many of my Ancestors are from Birmingham, England, so to ensure I get the best results I have had to go through my Ancestry online tree and make sure I have stated England on every record.
Although I don't find Findmypast as easy to navigate, I subscribe mainly for the 1939 Register (which does have some problems with transcription errors) and the Newspaper records.
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Have done survey. Found it interesting that "Rootschat" wasn't on the list of website - because it has over the years proved to be of massive help to me and my research. Between Scotlandspeople and Rootschatters I have got much further with my research than I would have have imagined.
Thank you Rootschat!
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Thanks so much to all of you who took the survey!
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Completed your survey Jack.
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Survey completed.
Noticed GRO wasn't on the list.
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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
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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.
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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
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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
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Thanks for all the new responses!
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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)
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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
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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.
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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.
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Thanks again for all your responses!
(Survey closes in 24 hours)
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I am in the main happy with all sites I subscribe to online, if it isn't in one then usually it is in another.
Good luck
Louisa Maud
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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?
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?
Hi Jack,
Thanks for the explanation!
I was rather confused to begin with as SP is nothing like Ancestry in terms of Scottish Records as what Ancestry do hold are only transcriptions i.e. no genuine documents & of course the fact that SP only have Scottish documents.
I would think SP is more like Freebmd/Freecen except they don't have docs but they only provide for England/Wales BMDs & England/Wales/Scotland Census' transcriptions (nothing outside) whereas Ancestry are a Worldwide Commercial site which is a different thing altogether.
I prefer the navigation system on Ancestry to FindMyPast which has limited boxes to input info. to narrow down searches which becomes an effort more than enjoyment if you have a good idea of what exactly you're looking for & where i.e. too time consuming.
SP as I have noticed recently seems very slow (or maybe it's my comp)? but I've been bringing up blanks to things I know to be correct only to find that after ticking a box I have clicked on 'search' but the box I'd ticked although showing my choice had not actually activated (if that's the correct word) i.e. my new search has actually been for the search previously.
I also find the navigation on SP quite time consuming.
The initial search indicator has 'Search our records' i.e. click which shows 3 different boxes to choose from which is fine but when you then click on 'Search for people' you have numerous boxes to click on whereas a 'Drop down' menu would be so much quicker for the numerous other choices therein.
I did the survey a few days ago, good luck in the future!
Annie
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Thanks so much to everyone who took the survey!
I got a really great response to it and most came via this forum.
THE SURVEY IS NOW CLOSED
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Thank you for letting I know , good luck
Louisa Maud
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Thanks so much to everyone who took the survey!
I got a really great response to it and most came via this forum.
THE SURVEY IS NOW CLOSED
just seen this thread, but found I'm too late for the survey. I use Ancestry at the moment. was a FindMyPast subscriber for many years back to when they were 1837online, but stopped my sub abt 8 months ago when they doubled it. also have annual sub to SEAX because OH has lots of essex ancestors. Last year had a one year sub to Jersey archives, but exhausted my Jersey ancestors so did not renew.