In order to perform these tasks, I have to have a MyHeritage family tree (I do!) and a subscription to WorldVitaslRecords.com (I do!). ?The way the Record Matches work is that MyHeritage looks at persons in my MyHeritage family tree, tries to find them in the free or subscription record collections that they have access to, and if they find a match they add it to the Record Matches list.
1) ?Here is the Home page my MyHeritage website:
2) ?I clicked on the "View your Record Matches" link on the screen above, and went to the Record Matches page on the Family Tree tab:
The page above lists all of the record collections in which the Record Matching technology found matches. ?There are 3,765 Record Matches for people in my tree, and they are in 30 record collections. ?The collections that are listed for my Record Collections are:
* ?1860 U.S. census (7 matches)
* ?1940 U.S. Census (8 matches)
* ?U.S. Air Force Register Extracts (5 Matches)
* ?California Births, 1905-1995 (227 Matches)
* ?California Deaths, 1940-1997 (234 Matches)
* ?Data Relating to the Settlement and Settling of New York and New Jersey (3 Matches)
* ?Early Germans of New Jersey (4 matches)
* ?England & Wales Deaths, GRO Indexes, 1969-2007 (46 matches)
* ?Everton Pedigree and Family Group Sheets (9 matches)
* ?Find-A-Grave (1,322 matches)
* ?Historical and Genealogical Miscellany, Volume 1 (3 matches)
* ?Illinois Deaths, 1916-1950 (4 matches)
* ?Illinois Deaths before 1916 (1 match)
* ?Illinois Marriages, 1763-1900 (50 matches)
* ?Kentucky Births, 1911-1999 (1 match)
* ?Kentucky Deaths, 1900-1999 (2 deaths)
* ?Leicestershire Parish Birth and Christening Records (2 matches)
* ?Leicestershire Parish Marriage Records (3 matches)
* ?Maine Deaths, 1960-1996 (3 matches)
* ?Maine Marriages, 1892-1966 (24 matches)
* ?Maximilian Family Tree (157 matches)
* ?Membership of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-Day Saints, 1830-1848 (4 matches)
* ?Newspaper Archive (818 matches)
* ?Social Security Death Index (738 matches)
* ?Texas Births, 1926-1995 (53 matches)
* ?Texas Marriages and Divorces (29 matches)
* ?The Early Germans of New Jersey (2 matches)
* ?The Early Germans of New Jersey, Their History, Churches and Genealogy (2 matches)
* ?U.S. World War II Army Enlistment (1 match)
* ?UK Marriage List, 1655-1992 (1 match)
3) ?The default filtering option seems to be 1 star (whatever that means). ?Up under the number of matches, there is a link for "Filtering Options" (273 matches not listed). ?The user can choose how many Stars to select - 5 stars gave me 48 matches in 5 collections, and 0 Stars gave me 4,038 matches in 32 collections. ?My guess is that most users won't modify the default filtering. ?Here is the Filtering window:
On that window, the user can choose the group of matches to display (e.g., pending, confirmed, rejected) and the Record types to display (e.g., structured or text).
4) ?I wanted to look at how the matches are presented. ?Here is the 1940 U.S. Census page for my 8 matches):
In the screen above, the information in my tree is on the left side of the screen (birth death, parents, spouses, children) and the record data is on the right side of the page (birth, residence, parents, spouse, children in the record). ?I can click on the blue "Review Match" button for each match to see the record, or I can click on the check mark to confirm the match, or the X mark to reject this match.
I clicked on the blue "Review Match" button for one of the 1940 Census matches (3 screens below):
In this record collection, the information in my tree is at the top left of the screen, and the information about the person in the record is on the right side of the screen. ?The census source information is provided (NARA roll, image frame, state, county, township, enumeration district, page, family number andl ine number), but no source citation is created). ?The record image is provided, and can be manipulated within the frame, or the user can choose to go full screen with the image. ?On the full screen, the user can download the image to your computer (by doing a "Save image as" in your browser). ?The household members are listed below the image.
Finally, the user is told that if this match is correct to extract the information by the record by editing the person profile in the MyHeritage family tree. ?The user is given the choice to Reject or Confirm the match.
5) ?After this first look, I have these thoughts:
* ?The Record Match system works pretty well as far as it goes. ?It is limited by the record collections available to MyHeritage, including free collections like Find-A-Grave and Ellis Island, and subscription collections, like the census and newspaper collection.
* ?It is unclear if the Record Match number covers EVERYONE in my 40,000 person family tree. ?If it doesn't, then I wonder if the system looking for more matches automatically, or do I have to instigate that somehow using the Research menu?
* ?There is no indication of the limitations of each record collection. ?I know that I have many more persons in my tree that are in the 1940 U.S. Census - the MyHeritage matches for my people are in Connecticut, New York, and Pennsylvania.
* ?We all know that many records were created with errors in names, locations, ages, etc. ?It is unclear to me how the Record Matching technology decides on the range of the variables. ?Are names coded using Soundex or similar? ?Do ages have some year range? ?The MyHeritage SuperSearch matching in the Research tab permits these variations.
* ?The Filtering options appear to be logical and useful.
* ?The MyHeritage Record Search technology will help me find additional information on persons in my family tree. ?While I have mined databases like the Social Security Death Index and Find-A-Grave extensively, I have not done extensive mining in the Newspaper Archive collection. ?This will be my main concentration in the weeks ahead.
* ?I believe that this is the only record matching technology that looks in newspaper records without ?entering names into a search field.
* ?The MyHeritage Record Search is an excellent advancement for MyHeritage users as long as they have a subscription to the record collection providers. ?This is a first step for MyHeritage because the number and type of record collections available are limited. ?If they can add access to many more record collections (e.g., U.S. Census, England Census, military records, passenger list records, and more), then they may rival Ancestry.com in the future.
6) ?Disclosure: ?I have a complimentary subscription to both MyHeritage.com and WorldVitalRecords.com courtesy of MyHeritage, for which I am grateful. ?However, this does not influence my objective opinions in reviews of these websites and their products.
The URL for this post is: ?http://www.geneamusings.com/2012/09/first-look-at-record-matches-on.html
Copyright (c) 2012, Randall J. Seaver.
Source: http://www.geneamusings.com/2012/09/first-look-at-record-matches-on.html
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