I'd Rather Find My Future Partner

This headline on the WorldVitalRecords blog caught my attention:

But no, they are not offering to track down my former girlfriends.

The Number of Names

When I was a kid, I was always skeptical of those "__ Million Served" signs at McDonald's (were they counting hamburgers or customers?). The Ancestry Insider says I should also be skeptical about the name count claims made by online genealogy outfits.

When WorldVitalRecords.com claims "872,278,874 Names in 5,389 Databases," aren't we led to believe these are counts of people names? But WorldVitalRecords.com claims 337,484 names in Lippincott's Gazetteer of the World, 1895. This is a gazetteer! Yeah, yeah; many places are named after people.

Genealogy Company Hopes to Be Second to One

A Genealogue Exclusive [What's That?]

When World Vital Records launched in 2006, the founders had a modest goal: to become "the number two player in the genealogy industry." A year later, they are well on their way to meeting that goal.

"We're committed to being the number two genealogy company on the web," says Deputy Corporate Communications Director Britney Hanson. "That means that our customer service has to be absolutely second rate."

WVR guarantees that level of service by routing customer calls through India, Malaysia, Botswana, then back to India, where they're answered by homeless people loitering near pay phones.

The WVR philosophy extends to web development as well.

"Our webmaster was second in his class at the second-best IT school in Haiti," Hanson boasts. "His only prior experience was creating a MySpace page, but we think he's designed a great website for us—remarkable, really, given that he's completely color blind and types with his elbows."

In the online genealogy world, content is king. That's why WVR has searched the globe for the second-best content it can find.

"Right now we're digitizing the Godfrey Library's Discarded Family Group Sheet Collection. After that, we'll be scanning and indexing old 'Dear Abby' columns, grocery lists, report cards—anything we find stuck to our refrigerators at home."

And bigger things are yet to come.

"Yes, the rumors are true," Hanson reveals. "We are working with the National Archives to digitize the records of their employee softball league. The negotiations were tense, but being Number Two requires us to stay one step ahead of everyone else. Except Ancestry.com."

While I Was On the Roof...

I've been busy since last weekend putting a new roof on my great-aunt's garage, but I'm pretty sure I haven't missed any big genealogy news. Except that THE WHOLE FREAKING GENEALOGICAL WORLD HAS CHANGED!

Here's a rundown of the week's biggest announcements:

• FamilySearch announced a Records Access program that will speed up indexing of digitized records and help archives and heritage societies bring their collections online.
• More than 4,500 FamilySearch Family History Centers will get free access to WorldVitalRecords.com and FamilyLink.com, and also to Kindred Konnections and the Godfrey Memorial Library website. Selected centers will soon have access to HeritageQuest Online as well.
• Footnote.com is publishing full Revolutionary War pension files online, and offering free access at Family History Centers.
• The final obstacles to cracking open the Holocaust archive at Bad Arolsen have been overcome. There is a lengthy article about the archive in this week's U.S. News & World Report that warns researchers to pack a lunch:

  So far, two thirds of the archive has been scanned. Yet genealogists and historians hoping for quick answers may be in for a letdown. Though the Nazis were enthusiastic recordkeepers, their crimes took place in more than a dozen countries, and victims spoke every language on the continent. The ITS has 849 different spellings of the name "Abramovich" alone. Even birthdates are unreliable. "People lied about their birthdays to seem older so they could survive selections at Auschwitz," notes Gabriele Wilke, an ITS archivist.

  Schelly at Tracing the Tribe has blogged about further limitations on access to be imposed by the United States Holocaust Memorial Museum. The Museum responded to criticisms on Wednesday.

WorldVitalRecords.com - Now With More than One Page!

The 77 million (actually more like 78 million, I think) records promised by WorldVitalRecords.com on Monday have this afternoon been made available, albeit intermittently (if you don't see the search box, try dev.worldvitalrecords.com). Included data is from the SSDI, Maine Death Index, and Louisiana Slave Index. These records are available elsewhere, but nowhere with a spiffier name than "WorldVitalRecords.com." The site's "big international launch" will come in October.

[tagged: genealogy, family tree, ancestry]

WorldVitalRecords.com Gets a Makeover

It doesn't look like much now, but this may be the next great genealogy website. Opening for business on July 3, WorldVitalRecords.com promises to become "the number two player in the genealogy industry." The unmentioned leader in the industry is, of course, me.

Provo Labs will revitalize an existing site, WorldVitalRecords.com, and build it to be a vast library of genealogical resources, including international genealogy databases, references to top genealogical resources, a blog planet, podcasts, videocasts, Webinars, expert advice, training, and user-generated content.

"People shouldn’t have to spend their life savings to find their ancestors. We’re making it easy and affordable for our users to access our content," said Whitney Ransom, Corporate Communications Director. [Link]

When they say "revitalize," they really mean it. Here's what the same website looked like last week (courtesy of Google Cache).

[tagged: genealogy, family tree, ancestry]