Last night I eagerly watched the first episode in the new PBS Series, Faces of America, facilitated by Henry Louis Gates. There’s been a lot of buzz in the genealogy community in anticipation of the show. It comes at the heels of Gates’ popular African-American Lives & African-American Lives 2 series. After the show, I then participated in a fun post-show chat hosted over at Geneabloggers to talk about our perceptions and thoughts.
Thomas has put together a RSS feed to see the geneablogsphere reactions to the show that are all interesting to read. Here are my thoughts:
- Many have commented on the desire to have seen more of the research process explained in the show. I understand the show producers may have wanted to focus more on the emotional connections for the show, but in the books that have been written to compliment the African American Lives series and the Finding Oprah’s Roots show, there is more detail and emphasis on the research process. I have both books, In Search of Our Roots & Finding Oprah’s Roots and even learned a few tips and strategies while reading them. The benefit of the show is that in can increase the awareness among the general population and I am hopeful that those that are more serious will take the time to read the books by either looking for them at their local public library or by purchasing outright. I would like to see a companion book published for Faces of America as well.
- I’m a big proponent of the social web. I’ve posted before on this topic, but I’ll say it again – I do think there is a missed opportunity from the show producers to leverage the interest and use it for greater genealogical good. With African-American Lives 2, they did establish an online forum for users to share their personal stories and used tagging to help structure the stories that were being shared. But, can you imagine the database that could be built if they also asked people to fill in 3 or 4 generation ancestor charts? They could have an online “facilitator” to help answer people’s questions and guide them to well-established resources, or host their own chat sessions for interested parties. With 4 episodes to air, this could have been a several weeks long endeavor and really capitalize on the generated interest (the website pretty much crashed last night; there was interest!). Many of the stories presented on the older show sites have details, but much of it is unstructured. As a knowledge management and information professional I highly encourage structure.
- After watching the show last night, I began to think about the upcoming Who Do You Think You Are series. I’ve never seen the UK show, so off to YouTube I went in search of episodes. I watched two last night – that of actor David Suchet and also that of Zoe Wannamaker. They were excellent! It was cool to see David Suchet b/c he’s known for playing the Agatha Christie character Hercule Poirot. I’ve not seen the British shows with him, but I have read many a Hercule Poirot mystery. I think I have found a new television series to watch and I posted part 1 of his episode as my Featured Video in the sidebar on the right. I am eager to see the NBC show even more now after watching these episodes.
- Did you promote the show among your friends and family? I certainly did! I have some coworkers who I dabble in their family trees every now and then and so I told them all and sent them each a little extra piece of family history — one of them is a descendant of long lineage associated with eastern tennessee whom I recently found a book in the Internet Archive with information about the emigrating ancestor that was written in the 1920s; another has ties to Hawaii and I shared with her a new website/blog focusing on Hawaiian genealogy that could be a useful resource moving forward; and the third I was able to send pictures of her ancestors headstones that were just added to FindAGrave within the past two months. Just a little bit to keep the motivation going 🙂
So, I’m excited at the prospects and do still look forward to the additional episodes. It had its strenghts and weaknesses, but overall I am glad for this opportunity to promote the need for us all to more closely study and understand our family histories. If you missed it, you can watch in online.
Taneya,
I recently checked out the British version of WDYTYA based on a recommendation of a gen-blogger (can’t remember who). She said to watch Jerry Springer and you wouldn’t think of him the same way again. She was right – very powerful television! Have you seen any of the BYU-TV series The Generations Project? They’ve made the non-celebrity version. We’re really in the midst of a gen-media blitz!
Have you seen subsequent episodes? I’d love to hear your thoughts! What a fun series!
I watched all the episodes of Faces of America .
I was asked by Mr. Gates to respond back to him when the airing of this geneology program was over. He valued my opinion on the series because of a letter I wrote to him last year regarding a book I have written about the ancestors. I uncovered my genealogy on four of my family surnames, and wrote a book about them entitled My Slade Phenomenon.
Gates did a marvelous job on this series. Here again, however, there are some impressive genealogy stories a lot of ordinary people have to share with the public. I would have like to have seen that implemented into this series also.
Overall, what I feel some amateur genealogist needed to know about was more of the techinques his researchers and genealogist used to uncover the material in the series on Faces of America.
I have been on talk radio with what I used when I wrote my book. One of the surnames in my family genealogy is Slade. The internet provided me with clues on my ancestry as well as folklore and other resources I used.
I’m also excited about the series Who Do You Think You Are. I have already answered this question in my research. What a wonderful feeling.