Doing Genealogy

As well as writing up the design plan for the blog, April has been busy with what we are here for - genealogy!

I'd love to say - especially for Vera, who sent me a pile of information to wade through - that its all been about our family. But it hasn't; it has been about the keen and eager folk who join the genealogy course I teach for Oldham Council.

Teaching genealogy

Genealogy isn't something you teach or learn easily; its something you feel in your bones. If you have the urge, nothing will stop you even if all you ever do is ask relatives where your family comes from. What we do in the classes is teach people how to use on-line resources to scratch that genealogy itch! But I can't deny that I do sneak the odd bit of time to do a little of our own family research and this time I have indulged myself recording the family of my cousin Jimmy - the Clitheroe Kid.

When I was a child, I used to spend a lot of time with Jimmy and my grandmother in Blackpool during the summers away from school. I used to call it "holidays" though what I was really doing was acting as a double for him in his stage shows. I still had to do school work, but it seemed like a laugh to me. I even turn up in some of the radio shows, after I was grown up enough to stick to a script. There is an archive of shows you can use to download or listen to shows from.

Its this sort of memory that often inspires the "itch" for genealogy, though it can be to find out about a bad guy rather than a comedian - remember, one of our family was hanged with the infamous Pendle Witches. Every family is likely to have skeletons in the cupboard when you start to investigate.

On-line resources

So where do you find on-line resources? Well, I'm not going to run my course here - I do have a living to earn - but I will mention the main source we should be using in the UK. Don't get me wrong, the resources are for anyone and thats one of the joys of on-line research, but in the UK there are good reasons to use details held by Ancestry.co.uk since they are our records from the National Archive database.

We ought to be better going directly to the Archive - but have you ever tried to search that mess? Its terrible and one of the most tricky to use, badly designed, unfriendly messes I have seen on the internet. Frankly, it stinks, while the version on Ancestry is easy to use, simple to search and just as good.

The good reasons are not quality of the data or even facilities of the web site. They are about the quality of services since over here we have family history centres in most towns and in most there are PCs you can use freely to get on-line and do research. For many of us, our public libraries offer a similar service even when there is no local family history centre.

Frankly, we have it made.

How do we use them?

The first lesson is one we should all take to heart - don't part with money! Yes, you can join the Ancestry website and should if you want to use the extra functions you get - but it costs almost £100 per year, so you really have to want those extras!

For most of us, stick to free membership since it will let you do research and even store the family tree on-line as a safe copy in case your PC at home should break, burn, get stolen or any of the other multitude of disasters that can happen. With the free membership, you can do the basic research and get the details you want - but what you can't do is get copies of the documents you might need.

To get document copies, you need paid-for membership and, like I said, that's a lot of money a year. But there is a better way that should be available to every one of us in Britain. Theres a special membership available on Ancestry provided for public libraries.

The library version of Ancestry gives you all the benefits of private membership, but as a public service. It isn't cheap, but since you don't pay for it directly why should you care? All you need is to be able to use it at your local library; you can do the basic work at home on your free version, note the people you want documents for and go to the library and get the documents from the public service version. I teach for a local authority where libraries and adult teaching are managed together, so I get access to the library service in my courses - and I assure you we don't neglect this magnificent source!

But what if your local library doesn't offer this service? Many are ignorant of the public service from Ancestry even though its the reason the company has access rights to the data in the first place! Check with your local library and if they don't offer access, contact your local council. Get the service made available, persuade your council to set up a family history centre - anything to get you the service we should enjoy. Remember, this is one of the things you pay your Council Tax for; if you don't get it, make a noise!

Failing that, move to somewhere like Oldham and join public libraries that do offer the full service.

Doing Design

There's no point discussing design methods without explaining the plan - and notice that there is a plan! Never start a design without one.

For me, it was easy: readers told me what they wanted. Let's make no bones about this - you may think your ideas are good but you will never do better than listen to users. I had a short list of what people wanted.

• To be "prettier"
• To be able to add stuff
• It should always work
• To see new changes easily

Pretty it up

The first is probably the most common request and almost impossible to be sure of. Its rare for any two people to think changes make it better the same way.

I seriously considered using a genetic algorithm to make site changes depending on the way it is used, mainly because the new templates make it fairly easy. I even tested it before I realised that the big problem was the design would be the basis for the rest of the linked sites - and if it kept changing, the whole site would have to do the same.

As a second choice, I set up on-line polls with different design elements and asked people what they liked. I didn't ask about colour - I had decided to use colours based on our family crest. Of course, the snag with asking is that you might get answers you don't like.

And sure enough, I did!

Personally, I don't like boxes with round corners: but - by a two to one majority - users did! I also don't like separate boxes to one side of the screen: but users did, by an even larger majority. There were even ideas about what should go in each box and mostly I've stuck to them, even limiting the newsreel to genealogy in the UK, although to be perfectly frank I am not sure how much I trust Google's news filter.

Like it or not - and I still don't - I had a design plan, but users are a fickle lot, so I'll run a poll to check what you think and keep running it from time to time.

Add it up

The second was trickier - there are many ways to add to a website - but gave me the chance to use some of the experience I have.

First to consider was to use existing web space and add a database. That was a no-go since my provider is cagey about it unless you cough up a chunk of cash. I don't want to pay, so that I can avoid asking users to cover costs.

I was left with fewer free options than I liked, but one was to use a free web host.

Problems with free hosts are legion but I'll leave you to check those for yourselves - there are plenty of articles about it in the computer press. If you're happy with those - and many are, including myself - then fine.

I didn't feel it was right since I wanted control over membership and access. Frankly, it was too much like hard work! That left me one choice: a free wiki service. Part two of the plan was in place.

Keep it up

One of the first lessons I learned was not to ignore advice, so I make no apologies for using two writers for whom I have had a long and deep respect.

The first is Guy Kewney, best known to many because the BBC mistook this tall, thin, wiry, red-headed and (I hope he will not mind me mentioning) greying and balding middle-aged man and interviewed instead a young, large, and very much black person who knew damn all about computing!

The second is a man for whom I have the deepest respect - even though I've met and talked with him and found he is a lot funnier and less serious than his journalism would suggest. In the past, he used to be known as "Wavey Davey" but now seems to be known only as Dave Winder - and as yet I can't find a link to his web page, but will set one up when I do!

Both have been around the block and use different web pages to make sure their work is available. As far as I know, neither has come out publicly and said "for reliability, spread your pages across multiple websites", but it seems to be the best idea and is precisely what I chose to do.

This, then, is the third part of the plan: different services provided by different servers linked through a central page.

Feed it up

The last suggestion was to keep people informed about changes. This was the hard part and the decisive issue in choosing some of the other options. It can be hard to keep you informed and, to be frank, I didn't want the effort of doing it myself . This is, after all, a site to be used rather to take me a long time just to keep people up to date!

RSS, also called Really Simple Syndication (and, yes, I know there are other claims for what it means) was and is the obvious choice. Best of all, it leaves it up to you to choose how much, how often and in how much detail to be kept up to date. It even lets you choose which parts to be kept informed about!

This is a no-brainer. The fourth part of the plan was decided by being blindingly obvious!

Design summary

So the plan was now in place.

It would be split into parts, each dealing with one service.
Page design would be based on the blog.
Changes might be needed because of how other parts looked.

The first three parts would be a blog, a wiki and the central pages on my own server. I would design the blog and copy it to my own page. Then, set up a wiki with a similar design - and change mine to look similar to both. All I had to do now was find the right wiki and get working.

Except that at this point family members asked if I could include a forum where they could meet up and maybe a chat-room where they could talk.... I had not started and already the requirements were growing!