What I'd like to improve with online genealogy tools

[Jeremy Slade]

I posted my thoughts on what I hope to improve with online genealogy
tools: http://blog.yology.org/2009/01/three-focus-areas-weaknesses-in-online-genealogy/

I'd like to hear your thoughts...


Jeremy

[Dave Lester]

Hi Jeremy,

Thanks for cross-posting on the group. I'll make sure to leave
comments in post places.

All of these are great points, but it's imperative that similar
metadata structures are used to increase interoperability between web
systems and hit the 'critical mass' where crowd-sourcing material
becomes meaningful. That may be the most difficult and bureaucratic
part of all of this. My earlier email about common XML interchange
formats was gesturing toward this.

I'm optimistic about some of your work including the pedigree
navigation mockup you created. Ideally, software components could be
shared across web-based systems that make this easier. I'd love to
see some javascript code that could be open source and shared across
platforms.

In addition to your point on story-telling, I believe there's
significant room for incorporating photos and other digital media
content about your family history as part of that. When you're
telling the story of two relatives, maybe you should include an old
photo of them that you've scanned? And throughout your story, you
could be linking to pages that have more about the individuals in the
story. That begins to require software that goes beyond simply
storing and sharing your family tree, but also digital objects.

Part of my own work on Omeka (omeka.org) developing digital archiving
software is to make it easy to link digital objects and oral history
texts together. Using Dublin Core as the base-line for all metadata,
I'd love to see online genealogy move in this direction of
standardization.

Keep us up to date with your progress!

Dave

On Jan 6, 12:51 pm, Jeremy Slade <jeremy.g.sl...@gmail.com> wrote:
> I posted my thoughts on what I hope to improve with online genealogy

> tools:http://blog.yology.org/2009/01/three-focus-areas-weaknesses-in-online...