Family Tree Is Coming. Are You Ready?
There has never been a greater emphasis placed on family history than we are seeing today both inside and outside of the Church. Even with such a focus, there are still many members of the Church who, to paraphrase a well-known scripture, are only kept from finding their ancestors because they know not where to begin to find them (D&C 123:12). That fact is at the very heart of a new initiative to upgrade the existing FamilySearch site and services to improve the experience of doing family history.
A first step in these enhancements is the release of Family Tree this fall. Family Tree, the eventual successor to new.familysearch.org, is an updated approach to organizing and recording your genealogy online. It is free, available to everyone (LDS members and nonmembers alike). It provides an easy way to share information, compare research, and go further faster by working together. As a family history consultant or priesthood leader, you should be familiar with what Family Tree can do and how it will help Church members perform their divinely appointed responsibility to find their families and qualify them for temple ordinances.
If you haven’t had a chance to see Family Tree in action, you can sign up at https://www.familysearch.org/tree/overview.
More about Family Tree
Family Tree is an online application you can use to capture and preserve the results of family history searching, complete with tools for note-taking and the citing of sources. Family Tree can also be used by families and fellow researchers to combine effort on a family line, with the results being preserved and available for future generations. In a nutshell, it merges the best features and data from new.familySearch.org and adds powerful tools for data accuracy, usability, and collaboration.
Family Tree enables you to:
- Save family information into a genealogy tree
- Easily submit the names of your ancestors for temple work
- Edit and delete incorrect data, including relationships
- Connect and collaborate with others on shared family lines
- Show where information came from. You can even link to online photos and documents.
Family Tree is an exciting step forward for FamilySearch. We are proud to have you on board as an advocate and trainer for this new web service. Using this tool, we will all be able to make an impact on family history and temple work that will change lives here on earth and on into the eternities.
