Monday, May 2, 2011

Musings On A Munday Ancestry.com Shaking Leaves

Ancestry.com and their “shaking leaves” are they a help or a hindrance?

I’ve heard comments made that are negative towards the Ancestry.com television commercials that basically say “click on this little leaf and voila, there is your family tree all done for you”. While I understand that is an extremely simplistic introduction to family history research, it is an introduction, isn’t it?

Would you rather not have the shaking leaves? Do you really want to clutter up the process with pop-up disclaimers stating: DO NOT TAKE THIS INFORMATION AS FACT, check your sources, cite those sources, yada yada yada? I don’t.

I get the gripes, but I also know that I started using Ancestry.com without any notion of what I was doing or how I was supposed to do it. I think I figured it out pretty quickly and others will too. Sooner or later some family member, that the tree is shared with, is going to ask the question “how was our great-grandmother born before her mother was?” In the end I think it will all work out. I'm glad to have the shaking leaves.

5 comments:

  1. Those shaky leaves get people started in genealogy, and that's all I need. Get 'em in the door.

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  2. The leaves are like chocolate. Give 'em a little, & they'll come back for more. I say, the more looking, the better. For all of us. So...

    Chase. Those. Quivering. Leaves. Please.

    Maybe your leaf is attached to my tree. Stranger things have happened. Seriously.

    ~Caroline

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  3. I so agree. Bring on the shaking leaves!

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  4. I also like the leaves. In many instances they have alerted me to new trees posted on Ancestry, which can sometimes help with collaborating on brick walls or information I didn't already have. I do wish that the leaves were move fruitful with tip offs to records. Ancestry is always adding more records, yet I never get a leaf...sad face.

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  5. Heather, I agree and almost made mention of that in my post. I wish more of the leaves led me to documents rather than other trees! Thanks for stopping by!

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