BILL'S QUICK GUIDE FOR FAMILYSEARCH MEMORIES

 BILL'S QUICK GUIDE FOR FAMILYSEARCH MEMORIES

Adding Memories - The Choices Are: 
Add Photo or Document (upload files)
Write a Story (write in plain text - maybe 10 minutes worth) Longer items should be written in a word processor and saved/exported as PDF and then uploaded. This is especially true of multi-page documents.
Add an Audio (create or upload)

Once items have been uploaded they are safely stored for the future. 

Some Limits:

• Maximum of 1000 Memories per profile/Person Page
• Public Memories should not identify living people. 
• Maximum size of any one Memories item is 15 MB.
• Only non-proprietary file formats are supported, so if one format is not accepted try another format.
• If you have trouble uploading photos try one of these file formats PNG, PDF/A, JPG or JPEG or JPEG 2000.
• Images that may be rejected: violence, advertising, nudity, kissing. (If automatic screening fails, ask why the photo is rejected.)
• Videos cannot be uploaded.

Suggestions:

• PDF is the best format for multi-page text items. e,g, books and other word processor documents
• Multi-page PDF files do not work well for page images, where each page is actually a huge photo. (15 MB limit)
• If scanning images, use a minimum of 300 dpi (300 pixels per inch) to preserve a good image quality.
• The easiest way to create and upload audio files is from your phone using the Memories mobile app.
• Audio files are usually limited to about 5 minutes in length to fit in the 15 MB limit.
• (With considerable tinkering in the free Audacity software I have been able to compress 30 minutes into 15 MB.) 
• All Memories should be tagged to people in the Family Tree. Otherwise people may not find them.
• Items in Memories can be added to Albums that you create in FamilySearch. Albums can be accessed by anyone who has the Album's link even without a FamilySearch account, so it is an easy way to share Memories.
• You can instantly colorize black and white photos or repair faded color photos if you have a free account at https://www.myheritage.com/incolor

This is not an exhaustive list, but is based on my experience personally uploading thousands of Memories and as a missionary supporting Memories in FamilySearch Support in 2015-2020.

Meeting with the missionaries?

 I am glad that you are considering meeting with the missionaries.
To arrange a visit by the missionaries, you can use the church website.
https://www.churchofjesuschrist.org/comeuntochrist/ps/meet-with-missionaries
This site also has answers to some of the questions you may have.
The missionaries and local church leaders and teachers serve at their own expense.

This was an important point to me when I first came in contact with the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints. 

I had been attending a different church in the small town where I grew up. At a friend's home, the young minister told us that he was planning to leave the ministry because he was required to teach things he did not believe, This really troubled me. If ministers were teaching things they did not believe, in order to receive a salary from their church, how could I believe what they said?

I had greater trust in the missionaries and leaders of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints because they were NOT paid by their church. I recognized that they could be mistaken in their beliefs, but they were teaching what they honestly believed.

And they asked me to pray to God to know the truth for myself, just like Joseph Smith had done. I did, and received the impression that this was where God wanted me to be. This decision has enriched my life in so many ways.

Another point of concern with my previous church, was the teaching that heaven was only accessible to those who believed in Jesus Christ. I estimated that in ancient Biblical times, probably less than 1% of the world's population ever heard of Jesus Christ. So a loving God had set up a system where 99% of his children would automatically fail? That made no sense to me!

The missionaries from the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints told me that the Bible had the answer. In 1 Peter chapters 3-4, the apostle Peter teaches us that while Christ's dead body lay in the tomb, his spirit taught the spirits of the dead, so that they could have faith in him, repent of the bad things they had done, and choose to follow the guidance of the Holy Spirit, and inherit eternal life, just like the living people.

A loving God had set up a system where ALL of his children could enjoy the blessings of heaven! Wow! I don't remember my previous church ever teaching this!
And the missionaries taught that there are three heavens, not just one. Interesting.

These were answers that made a difference to me.

If you have questions for the missionaries, that is a good thing.

May the Lord bless you. 

You are in my prayers,

Bill

Standardizing Place Names

I sent this message today. How does your experience compare with mine?

Dear FamilySearch Support.

Standardizing place names has always been a quagmire, but I think it can be improved if we get the engineers involved.

If I remember correctly, when I served in FamilySearch Support, the instructions were to choose the standard place name closest to the actual place. If the local place is not identified, choose the most specific level that is identified. 

If the place for the event is not identified, use "of" + some place the individual lived. And use "about" + the approximate time the event would have occurred. This enables us to fix the individual in time and space, facilitating further research, and helping the system to find historical records as sources.

Lately I see a tendency to sacrifice the accuracy of such estimates in favor of unwarranted precision. In a recent Youtube video people are saying "Remove the 'of's and 'about's, FamilySearch does not want them." If that is the case, then estimates are no longer properly identified as estimates, and confusion results. Genealogy is not always like physical sciences, where facts can be measured with high precision. e.g. Prior to the 1900s people were typically born at home on the farm, and not in town.

An obstacle to standardizing place names is that there may be different standard place names for the same place over time, and in the mobile app it is usually impossible to know which of the 10 standard names is correct at the time the event occurred. Can't we simplify this? If that locality was called by the same name across the centuries, why worry about what the local government was? i.e. focus on geography rather than politics

And coordinate the automatic matching with the places listed in the "Other Events", so that priority can be given to getting the Country correct, rather than the current situation, where priority is given to matching the Locality, even if the "matching locality" is thousands of miles away from the real place.  

In my personal experience, I found that many of my ancestors were standardized as living in the tiny Scotland district on the island of St Helena rather than in the actual country of Scotland, due to a flaw in the computer algorithm. Ask anyone doing research in Ukraine how often "Galicia, Austria" gets standardized as "Galicia, Spain". Match on the largest jurisdictions, not the smallest, and such errors will tend to disappear.

Please forward this message to Todd or someone who will understand the finer points.

Let's see if we can get the "matching" algorithm fixed.

Thank you,

Bill Buchanan

My blog: http://billbuchanan.blogspot.com
My FamilySearch blog https://billsfamilyhistorycenter.blogspot.com/