MyHeritage: Genealogy in Web 2.0 style
Drawing up genealogical ancestors is a serious hobby for many people and with the advent of computers it reached a qualitatively new level. There was even a special GEDCOM format developed in 1984 for standardization of this field – it is the format in which most of the genealogical software imports and exports. Today in the market there is a large quantity of the software, allowing drawing up genealogical tree both on professional and amateur level, but the following round of genealogy development is certainly the Internet services, in addition serving as a family social network.
A separate profile is created for each relative in them, and after receiving an e-mail invitation, they can edit it, exchange messages and photos, as well as take part in joint work on the tree. Considering that each genealogical tree can potentially grow to infinity (we are all brothers and sisters), the latter feature is very useful. No matter how enthusiastic a researcher may be, he or she cannot cover all the family connections alone – so it makes sense to get relatives involved, who can fill in their line and pass the baton on.
Among the family social networks present on the Internet today there is one powerful, serious genealogical resource MyHeritage.com and several less functional and similar services – such as Geni.com, FamilySpace and others. In this review we will look at the main features of MyHeritage. This is an Israeli service that is available in 36 languages. It works in conjunction with the downloadable for Windows program Family Tree Builder. The family tree is edited in the desktop client and then it can be published on the family website. You can use the service not only to work directly with the tree, but also to create an extensive family chronicle that includes information about each relative, photo albums, and other historical evidence. MyHeritage also offers many opportunities for entertainment and research activities.
You can download the installation file on the service’s official website in the Downloads section. The installation of Family Tree Builder will take place over the Internet. To log into the program, you must have an account on the MyHeritage website. Working in it begins with creating a project. It has a separate folder on the local disk which includes a configuration file, a compressed GEDCOM database and added photos. Later you will be able to restore the project from this folder or from a site (import and export of a separate GEDCOM file is also included).
Completion of the tree starts with specifying the first family – husband and wife, then it is suggested to add children to this family, and further branches off from this family to all other relatives. You are supposed to indicate yourself as the first person, your other half (if you have one), and start making connections: here are my parents, children, brothers and sisters, their relatives come from them, and so on. Each person in the tree is assigned a unique ordinal ID (it cannot be changed later). Having selected a family member, the user can edit his personal data: sex, name, surname (but there is no separate graph of patronymic), date and place of birth and death. Dates are given by the Gregorian calendar, Jewish or French Revolution calendar, and not necessarily exact – approximate ones will do. In addition, one can add occupation, education, personal information, contacts, quotes, notes, biographical facts, additional information such as physical data and DNA markers, and attach photos, video/audio files and documents. It is not difficult to notice that almost any information about a person can be entered into this card. You can add an unlimited number of relatives to the person, which are divided into groups of “Parents”, “Siblings”, “Spouses”, “Children” (new persons who are not related to each other can also be added). There can be more than one parent and spouse – in this case you should specify that it is, for example, an adoptive mother or second wife.
The side column contains a list of persons, which can also be viewed as a tree. However, its structure does not provide a clear view of the relationship between relatives. Here you can see a list of families at the origin of the family: the families of children are descended from them, and so on, but the children displayed in one family are not present in the other, despite the presence of kinship links on both lines. In the main information window, the connection is displayed both by mother and by father, but you cannot see relatives outside the families of parents and children there.
