I’m in the middle of working on a presentation that I have due tomorrow, but I had to take a break to do this post before I forget about it.
So, today I’m in the car on the way home listening to my first Genealogy Guys Podcast. A few minutes into it, I learn from them that Footnote has released another virtual wall – this time it’s the USS Arizona Memorial in honor of the anniversary of Pearl Harbor. I visited Pearl Harbor in May, so I perked up when I heard about it. (the fact that I missed this announcement in the first place goes to show “out of it” I’ve been w/ my genealogy news of late).
In any case, I just visited the online, interactive memorial and I have to say I’m a little disappointed. Why? Because to date, while I think Footnote has a great idea to create the ability to contribute to a Person’s Page, they seem to be creating so many duplicate Person Pages that it detracts from the appeal for me. Is there a way to get Footnote to “merge” individual Person Pages rather than just “Link” two together? Footnote now has it so that there are Person Pages for the individual collections of the 1930 census, the Vietnam Memorial, the Arizona Memorial, the Social Security Death Index, plus anyone can create a Person Page.
In my own family tree, there are two pages that exist for my great-grandmother, Josephine Holloway Koonce (page 1 and page 2). I have added information to both of them because at first I didn’t realize there were two different pages. I do know that one comes from the 1930 census but I don’t remember how the other was generated. But, I would love to able to merge these two pages as one instead of having Footnote build up multiple copies of her “page” each time a collection came around that included her in it. Understandably I recognize that there could be data control issues as people could be merged erroneously, but I’d love to see some approaches to how this could be enabled. Kinda like how Ancestry does their member trees – a person looking can see a “compilation” record of an individual, as well as still see all the separate trees that include what the system thinks may be the same person. Footnote could let actual people initiate the merge and possibly combine that with computer algorithms.
The “Link” option just does not take care of this concern for me, and until I’m able to initiate a merge, I doubt I’ll be an active user of Person Page Beta.
Another wish item for Footnote? Instead of just “linking” a relative as a Related page, actually create fields for relationships on that person’s page for parents, siblings, spouses, children etc. The potential to build up a Footnote Family Tree is there, it just needs to be further developed.
Don’t get me wrong, I do like FootNote a lot! Last year, I found an extremely moving account of someone I’ve been researching in the Missing Air Crew Reports, But, I also have big dreams. I believe Footnote is dreaming big too in order to even start such a large project.
Okay, back to my work. 🙂
Update 12/10 — a Footnote representative responded to my comment on their blog post and explained how you can make a suggestion to merge two individuals. They do plan to enable such a feature in the future, so submit your suggestions now and they will make sure to address them when they make further progress with the project. Thanks Peter!
What I Want From Footnote
