Where can you try it out?

This beta viewer is available for the following censuses:

• 1930 US Federal Census: http://search.ancestry.com/search/db.aspx?dbid=6224
• 1911 Channel Islands Census: http://search.ancestry.com/search/db.aspx?dbid=2355
• 1911 Wales Census: http://search.ancestry.com/search/db.aspx?dbid=2353
• 1911 Isle of Man Census: http://search.ancestry.com/search/db.aspx?dbid=2354
• 1911 England Census: http://search.ancestry.com/search/db.aspx?dbid=2352

You can access the interactive image beta viewer from the record page by clicking on “View Interactive Image (BETA).”

How can you send feedback?

Please use the “Send comments” link at the top of the viewer.

What’s new?

Family Highlights

Highlights help you find people quickly by automatically highlighting the entire household.  This is most useful when there are multiple families on one image.

• Yellow highlight – Whether you selected someone from your tree or searched for someone new, that person is highlighted in yellow when viewing his or her record in the Interactive Image Viewer.
• Green highlight – If the person that is highlighted in yellow is in a household that has any other members, the other members of the household are highlighted in green.
• Orange highlight – An orange highlight is placed on any row that is not already highlighted in green or yellow when your mouse hovers over that row. This will only show up when there are multiple families in a household.

Informative Tips

By hovering over various cells, you can see a transcription of that cell and learn more about the facts in the record. Simply hover your mouse over an element of the record and a text tip appears.

Name Label Overlay
When you zoom in on an image, names labels will appear on the left side of the viewer so you can see exactly whose information you’re viewing.

Moving the image

The new image viewer has many features that are similar to the Advanced Image Viewer many of you are already using.  We’ve also added some new features.

• Click and Drag – Click anywhere on the image, hold down your mouse button, and drag your mouse in the direction that you wish to pan the image.
• Onscreen Controls – Use the arrow buttons to pan the image left, right, up, or down.  Additionally, you can use the magnifying glass buttons at the top of the onscreen controls or the slider at the bottom of the onscreen controls to zoom in or out of the image.
• Keyboard Controls – Use the arrow keys on your keyboard.  This will enable you to pan left, right, up, or down.  You may also use the “+” or “-” keys on your keyboard to zoom in or out.  Press the “Home” key to move your current view to the far left of the current image.  Press the “End” key to move your current view to the far right of the current image.  Press the “Page Up” key to move to the top of the current image.  Press the “Page Down” key to move to the bottom of the current image.
• Mouse Wheel Zoom – If your mouse has a mouse wheel, you can use it to zoom in or out of the image.

Actions Menu

Use the Actions menu to print, view record source, remove highlighting, and more.  Please note that this interactive image viewer is still in beta and some of the features you may be used to seeing are not available yet.

Print – Print the image or the current view.

• View highlighting – By default, household highlights are displayed on the image.  Select this menu item to disable household highlights.
• View source – Select this menu item to open the source panel and learn which organization provided the image.

We have also added some new options under the “Image controls” section of the actions menu.

• Rotate Clockwise and Rotate CounterClockwise - These menu items will rotate the image by 90 degrees in either the clockwise or counterclockwise direction.
• Flip Horizontally and Flip Vertically - These menu items will flip the image.
• Invert Colors - This option will reverse the colors of the image (black becomes white, white becomes black).  In some cases, this will improve the readability of the image.
• Increase and Decrease Contrast - Use the increase or decrease contrast menu items to improve the contrast on the image.

What features are coming soon?

• Index panel – See a transcription of the key fields underneath the image.
• Change locations by browsing – Change the focus of your browsing by selecting a new location directly from the image browse path.
• Improvements to save to tree – Saving to tree is available but the features which recognize whether you have come from a hint or if you have already saved this image are not implemented yet.
• Comments and corrections – We will add the ability to provide comments and corrections soon. We value all of your additions to our records.
• Sharing – Sharing the image via email, Facebook, or Twitter is coming soon.

Thank you for your input and suggestions on the beta version of the interactive image viewer.   We will be making many updates to this viewer in the upcoming weeks to add more new features and the other “coming soon” features listed above.

• Updated new search homepage
• Browse the Place Pages 

I thought it might be worth discussing a few more of the features in greater detail.  

Recent Searches 

When you are logged in, we remember and display the last 4 searches you did. To find them, look beneath the search form for Recent Searches.  You may have to do a few searches before you see recent ones.  When you click the names, we will redo the same search that you did in the past.  If you are trying to recreate a search that you did beyond your last four searches, click “See More” on the right side of this section. 

On the Recent Searches homepage, you can see your last 100 searches. They are organized chronologically by date.  You can see when you did the search, what information you provided, and in which category you were searching.  Clicking on a name will redo the search. Clicking the trash can will delete the search. 

Recently Viewed Collections 

Sometimes, you are focused on just a few data collections for a person or family group.  You may do a lot of reasearch in just those collections.  Recently Viewed Collections is designed to help you quickly get back to those data collections by placing them on the top right side of the search homepage. We display the names of the last three data collection homepages you visited. 

Similar to Recent Searches, you can also see a longer list of the data collection homepages that you have visited.  Click “See More” to go to a longer list of data collections.  You can see the name of the data collection, the category, and the date you last viewed the collection homepage.  Click on a data collection name to go directly to that collection home page. You can also delete any titles that you don’t want keep in your list of recently viewed collections.  

Just a few tips to help you return to your research quickly after you’ve stepped away.  I hope you give them a try.

Map on search homepage
Start browsing by clicking on the map or a link below the map on the new search homepage (http://search.ancestry.com/search/).  You can browse either the data collections that are unique to or related to specific places. There are thousands of new place pages for countries, states, territories, provinces and counties.

Collections by Place

Data collections are organized by category.  On the collection tab for each place, you can see the data collections that are unique to each place.

To see all the data collections in a category, click the “view all” link at the bottom of a category. It will take you to a page that displays the data collections in a category that are unique to that place and those that are related to that place.

On the right side of the page, there is a feature to let you switch locations without having to return to the search homepage.

You can switch regions, countries, or narrow to a specific county. If you narrow to a county and decide to go back to a larger location, just use the breadcrumb (chain of links) at the top of the page.

US State Pages & UK Country Pages

For US states and UK countries you can find links to extra resources and a history of the important events that occurred in that place. Look for the “history” and “resource” buttons.

History Tab

Understanding the history of a place can help you understand what happened in your ancestor’s lives, why they made certain choices, and what types of opportunities and obstacles they faced. Clicking on the history tab provides a brief set of basic milestones & statistics, a historical image, genealogy related facts, featured data collections, and some sample images of famous people from the place you are looking at.  This tab is meant to help you get started on your place based research and not a comprehensive history of a place.

Resources Tab

On the resources tab you can find links to public organizations outside of Ancestry.  Most resource pages include background information on census research, vital records, and local resources such as local libraries, genealogical societies, or historical societies.

What about searching?

You can do that too.  There is a search button at the top right corner of the place pages. When you click it, a form will pop-up to allow you to search with residence pre-populated with the location that corresponds to the place page.  The search results are summarized by category rather than sorted by relevance.  (This form will be changing in the future but the results will remain categorized.)

A few more tidbits

These pages are loaded with goodies.  I haven’t mentioned them all.  Here are a few more:

• On the main data collection page, there is a printer friendly link towards the top right side.  You can print a list of all the collections we list for each place and check each one off as you browse through it.
• On the right side bar there are links to view a map, find related message boards, and search the member directory for people doing research or looking for help in a particular place.
• Finally there is a section to send us feedback about our place pages.  It is at the last link on the right side bar.  We would really like your help in maintaining and expanding these pages.  The web addresses of local institutions change frequently, you may know about a great public resource that we have not listed, or have a great idea for a new feature.  Giving us feedback through this survey will help make the places even better.

Many places restrict access to vital records but place based records abound.  Although I think my Dansbury side came over to the United States in the late 1700s, I am hoping I can find a connection between a little town in New Jersey and Grosse Pointe Michigan to help me understand why my grandfather’s entire family moved in the early 1900s.

Good luck in all of your place-based research!

Laura Dansbury

Here’s what you will see:

New search homepage
The new search homepage will have updated navigation, maps, and access to both recent searches and recently viewed data collections.

Map on search homepage
You will be able to browse the data collections that are unique to or related to specific places.

Example of a place page
There will be thousands of new place pages for countries, states, territories, provinces and counties. For those of you who use old search, you may recognize that we have updated and improved the place pages you have seen in old search.

You can view the data collections Ancestry has for each location.  For many locations you can find links to extra resources and a history of the important events that occurred in that place. Look for the “history” and “resource” buttons.

Example of recent searches and recently viewed data collections
The new search homepage will provide access to your recent searches and to a new page that contains a list of the data collection homepages that you mostly recently visited.  These features will be displayed on the new search homepage after you do a search or after you visit a data collection homepage.

Some notes:

1. We will not be launching any changes to the new search forms on Wednesday night. We will release some changes to the new search forms in a short while.
2. Old search will not be updated; these changes only apply to new search.
3. A preview to the updated pages is located at http://landing.ancestry.com/search/tour/.
4. On Thursday, if your search page does not look like the pictures in this blog post, you may be using old search.  You can switch to new search by clicking on the “new search” link at the top right corner of the search homepage.

I will post more details on each new feature in more blog posts. I hope you enjoy using these new search pages and find navigating Ancestry.com has improved.

Best regards,

Laura Dansbury

• A revised introduction to explain the category
• The ability to narrow your search to a subcategory
• Featured data collections to help you find more content
• More help information
• More background information about category topics
• Sample images
• Search tips

Below is an example of the new Birth, Marriage &  Death category page.  We have updated all of our category pages in a similar style.   You can find them by hovering over the search button and clicking on the links in the drop down or by scrolling below the search form on the search homepage.

Here’s a bit more information about each area of the category pages.

Narrow by category

If you are looking for more specific records such as Marriage and Divorce records, now you can narrow your search by clicking on the ”narrow by category” links on the right column. These links let you further narrow your search to a smaller set of records.

Featured data collections

If you want to try browsing into a collection or search specific collections, this area gives you links to popular and updated data collections.  Seeing the featured data collections may also give you new ideas about what to search for next.

More help

If you need some ideas, the help links can lead you to new search strategies or help explain a new record type. 

Sample Images

If you are not sure what to expect from a category record, you can see a sample image to get you started.  Even if your ancestors are not in some of these categories of records, you can see some records for famous people to help you understand what the categories contain.

Search Tips

Read this section to get tips that can lead you to more relevant search results.  This section is designed for both new and experienced genealogists.

Access to Category pages from New Search Homepage

These new category pages are just the beginning of updates and new features on Ancestry.com search.  You can see a  preview of more updates on our microsite.

I really hope you like the revised category pages, available in new search only, and find them informative and easy to use.

Laura Dansbury

The forms have not changed. We only updated the content around the forms. Below is an example of the US Federal Census group page:

The group pages contain:

• A search form
• A list of data collections below the form
• Help links
• Introduction text to describe the group, explanations of typical data found in the group, and historical context
• A sample image of a famous person or place that is included in the group

From Ancestry.com, you can access the US, United Kingdom and Canada Censuses pages from the left side of the search homepage here:

You can also access them from  the left side of our Census and Voter lists page :

These pages give us the capability to group different collections together in a way that makes some topical search strategies easier.  We hope you find the improved formatting and access to these pages helps make your searches more efficient.  We are expecting to make more of these available throughout the year.

Laura Dansbury

To protect the privacy of living individuals, U.S. censuses are not released to the general public until 72 years after the census was originally taken. Since the 1940 U.S. Federal Census will not be available until 2012 and the 1950 US Federal will not be made publicly available in 2022, city directories contain information about all the adult residents in a town, such as their name, occupation and home and work addresses.

The 1950 census Substitute searches across more than 2,500 U.S. city directories from the mid 1940s through the 1950s. City directories were precursors to modern-day phonebooks and contain the names of each adult resident in the town along with their occupation and home and work addresses. Until the 1950 U.S. Federal Census becomes available, these records serve as a great resource for finding any adult family members who would have been alive during the 1950s.

You can learn more about how to use city directories  in our Learning Center.

I think it is time for a quick review on saving images and records and using the shoebox.   I’ve seen some questions on where the shoebox is located and if you can save images to specific places on your computer or to a DVD.  So let’s review the saving methods on Ancestry.com.

Question: What is the Shoebox? Where do I find my Shoebox? How do I use it?

Answer: The Shoebox is a place to save links to records that are interesting to you.  Sometimes you find a record that might be the right one, but you want more time to evaluate it before you decide to attach it to a tree. You can save a link to the record in your Shoebox and come back to it later. Please note that you don’t actually save copies of the documents, you save links to the documents on Ancestry.com. If you want to save copies of the actual documents, follow the steps described in the questions below.

As shown in the example below, the Shoebox is located near the bottom of the Ancestry.com home page.  If you have customized your homepage, your Shoebox might be somewhere else on the page, or you may need to add it back.  To add the Shoebox or to change its location on the home page, click the “Customize your homepage” link on the top right side of the home page.

Full information about the Shoebox is available in the support topics area of the Learning Center, which can be found in the navigation bar on the top of the Ancestry.com home or search pages.

Question: Where is the save button on a record?  For a record page, what are the saving options? Can I save a record to my desktop?

Answer: The record page is displayed when you click on a search result.  It contains a summary transcription of some key fields from the actual record.  From the record page, there are 2 ways to save a link to the record:

1. Click on a link in the “Page Tools” on the left side of the record page.
2. Click on the large orange “Save” button located below the record details to display a pop-up containing the available options.

You can save a link to the record page to your tree or to your Shoebox.  However, the record page cannot be saved to your computer.  Instead, you can save the actual image by following the steps in the next question.

Question: Can I specify where I want to save an image? Can I save an image to my computer if I don’t use genealogy software? Can I save an image to my computer after I saved a link to it in my Shoebox?

Answer: You can save an image to your family tree, your computer, your Shoebox, or to all of these locations. An image can be saved to your computer multiple times.  You don’t need genealogy software to save an image or use it in a document, but if you have a genealogy program, you may be able to import the images you save from Ancestry into it.

When you are viewing an image, the Save button is located in the top right corner of the enhanced image page as shown:

When you click “Save”, you will see a pop-up showing all the available Save options.

Once you have saved an image, the area at the top of the image page will be updated to reflect your actions.  In the example below, I saved a link to the Laura Brett image to my Shoebox and to my family tree.

When you save an image to your computer, you can save it to your hard drive, thumb drive, or removable disk.  If you have a special folder on your computer where you save all the images you have in your genealogy software, you can save the image directly to that location.

Saving images and attaching links to records is a good practice to help you fill out the details about your ancestors’ lives. I find that going back to images that I looked at in the past gives me new clues when I change my search focus.  For example, I knew my grandfather was a chauffeur early in his career, but I didn’t know why he moved across the country.  His draft record stated his employment information in New Jersey. By reexamining his employer’s name on his draft record and searching for his employer’s family, I found a reason why he moved from New Jersey to Michigan.

Good luck with all of your searches!

Laura

Specific questions about errors or technical problems will be answered more quickly if you email support@ancestry.com or call the Customer Support Center.  Our phone number is available on the bottom of the homepage and on our Contact Ancestry.com Support page.

I want to thank everyone for your participation in the search strategies webinar. We had a wonderful turnout with thousands of comments and questions.  We answered as many questions as time allowed.  We have a list of the questions asked during the webinar and we’ll be posting answers to the most popular questions and topic areas.

There were many questions about the card catalog and about topics that can be researched using the card catalog. Most of them fell into a few themes which are summarized below.

Question: How do you find the card catalog?

Answer: The link for the card catalog is on the left side of the search homepage.  The search homepage can be found by clicking on the search button in the navigation bar at the top of Ancestry.com web pages.  You can also hold your mouse over the search link at the top of the page without clicking and you will see the card catalog at the bottom of the drop down.  Here is a direct link to the card catalog and a screenshot of where you can find the links.

(Where to find links to the card catalog)

Question: How can you specify a place and a year to narrow down the list of census data collections? How can you search for a state or county census record? How do you look up individual census documents?

Answer: You can narrow census records by date and location. First, go to the card catalog and select “Census & Voter Lists” from the left side of the page under “Filter by Collection.”  Then, under “Filter by Location,” choose a  country or region.  Finally, select the year you are interested from the left side of the page.  At the top of the page, you can change the sorting order of the census records. See the drop down menu that says “Sort by.” I like to sort by “Database Title.”

(Changing sort order in the card catalog)

To see the records for a particular state or county, repeat the first two steps above, but don’t choose a time period yet. Continue to narrow your location down to a state or county using the links on the left side of the page. The  screenshot below shows the first few counties in California.

(Narrowing census data collections to California counties)

Finally, choose a census collection title from the list of data collections located on the right side of the page to go directly to the page with the search form and browse links for a specific census.

Question: Where can you find cemetery records?

Answer: You can use the search function in the card catalog to search for data collections about cemeteries or many other similar topics such as “graveyard” or “burial.” Just type “cemetery” into the title field and click “search.” Then you can narrow the results by collection type, location, and year.  The screenshot below shows where the title field and where the “filter by collection” links are located.

(Searching for cemetery in the card catalog)

Questions: How do you find collections by country? How do you research records from Germany?  How do you find records for France or Paris?

Answer: You can use the card catalog to see a list of data collections for Germany and France.  Use the “Filter by Location” links on the left side of the page. Choose “Europe”, and then “Germany.”  As you can see in the screenshot below, there are 1,338 data collections available today for Germany.

(German records in the card catalog)

You can also narrow the choices further by selecting a collection type such as “military.”

Another way to search for place is to search by keyword. For example, to search for data collections about Paris, go to the card catalog and use the keyword field to input “Paris” and then click search.  For more information, you can view our webinar that focuses on European research.

Questions: How do you find military records from France during WWII? How can you find Navy records or records from other service branches from WWII?

Answer: Many countries do not release military records. Some military records will not be made public until the country in question decides that enough time has passed such that record privacy is no longer a concern.   You can learn all about our military collections by listening to the military records webinar. In addition, Ancestry magazine published an article about World War II in May.

To find our military data collections about France, you can either search or browse the card catalog.  You could start by filtering the card catalog by “Military”, then filtering by location to “France.”

You can also search the card catalog by keyword.  Try searching for “World War II” and for “WWII.” You may also want to search for keywords associated with the World War II such as “holocaust”.   Finally, I recommend trying a title search for “World War II” in addition to the keyword search.  Shown below is a screenshot for a search with “WWII” in the keyword field.

(Card catalog search results for WWII)

Question: Where can you find the ships records on Ancestry.com?

Answer: Go to the card catalog and look on the left side of the page.  Click “Immigration & Emigration.”   Then scan through the collection choices. We have hundreds of data collections from passenger lists and crew lists to passports and ship pictures.

(Records about immigration and emigration including ships records)

Specific questions about errors or technical problems will be answered more quickly if you email support@ancestry.com or call the customer support center.  Our phone number is available on the bottom of the homepage and on our Contact Ancestry.com Support page.

The search team is excited about our free online webinar about searching Ancestry.com on October 14th at 8:00 PM Eastern Daylight Time. In this webinar, we will show you the best strategies for searching Ancestry.com’s thousands of databases. Improving your search strategies will help you to find more information about your ancestors.
It can take time to learn all the details of a search engine and keep up with new features. We’ll explain how to find more records and adapt your search strategies as you look beyond census records. We will start with a helpful overview and then provide step-by-step instructions for using several of the search engine’s features. This webinar is designed for beginning to intermediate members of Ancestry.com. To attend the webinar, please register here.

Looking forward to seeing you all soon!

Laura