Tag Archives: Rootstech

Big news! Some of it great, some of it…not so good. When I was at the Rootstech conference in Salt Lake City in 2024, Familysearch was making a big deal about using “AI” technology to transcribe genealogy documents into searchable data. They gave us a taste by indexing words from wills and probate records which are typed on a typewriter rather than handwritten. My genealogy colleagues who need wills and probate records were all excited, and rightly so. My Italian genealogy colleagues were expectedly disappointed. I’ll try to explain this for people who are not tech nerds like me. The …

I haven’t taken a trip for genealogy purposes for some years. I used to go to Salt Lake City for one week a year to do research on microfilm, but now that those films are available on FamilySearch.org, I don’t need to spend the money to fly and stay at a hotel anymore. However, I did fly to SLC for a conference called RootsTech, which is a huge gathering of genealogists and computer tech people. Unlike conferences hosted by the Federation of Genealogical Societies or the National Genealogical Society, which are designed to link up local genealogy groups and train …