Family Tree Legends: Open Source Genealogy Software

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Family Tree Legends: Open Source Genealogy Software Presented by Melissa Hisel For LI 815

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Family Tree Legends: Open Source Genealogy Software. Presented by Melissa Hisel For LI 815. Introduction. Family Tree Legends 5.0 Colorado Software Developer. What do it do?. Registration Required. Supports 36 Languages. Maps. - PowerPoint PPT Presentation

Transcript of Family Tree Legends: Open Source Genealogy Software

Family Tree Legends:Open Source Genealogy SoftwarePresented by Melissa HiselFor LI 815

This presentation is on an OSS product called Family Tree Legends. It is Genealogy Software which was mentioned by one of my co-workers at Longmont Public Library who is the in-house genealogy wizard. 1IntroductionFamily Tree Legends 5.0

Colorado Software Developer

It was developed by Pearl Street Software, a company based in Boulder and Family Tree Legends s affiliated with MyHeritage.com an Israeli genealogy-tech company. You download the software from myheritage.COMWhat this means? The basic software: Family Tree Legends (which is 5th generation at the time that I built this intro) is free ~ HOWEVER~ with the help of MyHeritage.com you can pay for a premiere edition with additional features. You also have the opportunity to purchase complimentary products from the folks at my heritage. Another thing it means is the website for FTL is pretty attractive w/scrolling screenshots a menu bar with options to check out info about the product, testimonials, and the optional downloadable toolbar. I did not download the free toolbar but it is integrated with your myheritage work, it has something called Family Chat which sounds like a Skype-type platform with audio, video and text chat. And it reminds you of all the birthdays and important anniversaries of the people you enter into your family tree who are still living. 2What do it do?

This is a software program which allows you to build detailed family tree diagrams. 3Registration Required

You are required to register with myheritage.com to utilize the free product I *think* this is because the website back-up is provided by My Heritage and part of the idea is the ability to network with other genealogists making connections between family trees. The other reason is so they can sell you things. 4Supports 36 Languages

Maps

FTL plots the geographic locations the ancestors and relatives you enter into your family tree.

Easy to Use & Fun! ** It actually is really easy to use and pretty fun.

7Smartmatch TechnologyWas Jeremy Simon really related to Jerelly Simon

Probably not

The idea is to link your family tree with others and quickly expand your research but I kept getting wonky, unrelated suggestions8Private Family Website

You can publish your family tree to a private, free website. You can share it with whomever you wish. Even if you choose not to use the website you can use the website to backup your data. 9Photo, Video & Document Storage

You can store photos and tag faces. You can also store videos and documents. I have not seen any specific mentions of how much photo/doc storage you get but I suspect that at a point you will run out of free storage and be prompted to upgrade to a premium *pay* account. The free account will allow you to document 2499 ancesters. When you find #2500 youll probably be ready to pay. 10Prepare to be upsold

Family Tree Legends= Free

My Heritage Family Tree Builder Premier= Pay (about $60/year) 25% off if you buy it now!!

Smart Research: which claims to mine the worlds top 100 genealogy databases which seems dubious to mebut Im not going to try it.

Merging of Smart Matches: will merge your tree(s) with matches they find among other FTL users. You can manually enter this yourselfit would be a pain.

All-in-One Charts & Full Map Support it wasnt quite clear to me just what these features were. 11

You build your family tree using a Wizard:Fill out these templates for each family12

And each family member13

The records for each person are actually quite detailed: Citations,Notes, Face, DNA information, Physical Attributes, Photos, Occupational Info, Lots of good stuff. 14

Tip: Add your own speaker notes here.15

Here is the basic interface16

You can pay to have various charts and posters printed. But you can print a variety of different reports for free. 17Website http://www.myheritage.com/site-family-tree-151373411/li-815-sample

This link will not allow you to see all features I can send you an invitation to view with more features. There may be some features you cant see unless you yourself, register. 18

So, overall I think it is pretty excellent free software.

Unfortunately it would probably not work at all in a library computer lab because when you download the software that software can only be used with one user. So patrons could not open accounts and access them library machines. They could be useful for patrons who have their own computers and need to organize the information and would directly compliment the Ancestry and Heritage Quest and the other genealogy databases that are common in public libraries.

It might be useful in a special library for a genealogical society, historical society, museum because you can track multiple families with one account. Although with very in-depth work you probably need to upgrade to the premier pay account when you hit 2500 records.

I emailed customer support for FTL and asked if there were even any pay version that would allow multiple loginsand after 8 days I got an email that said: Unfortunately not at the moment.

Best regards,Claus Korsgaard19