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Edgewood New Mexico FamilySearch Center/Class Notes (view source)
Revision as of 18:19, 26 July 2023
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Robinson covered the different features of ''Google'' including Images, Alerts, Translate, Earth, and Books. She demonstrated the use of special characters in the search box such as " ", AND, OR, and * which can be refined by using the ''Google'' Advanced Search page. | Robinson covered the different features of ''Google'' including Images, Alerts, Translate, Earth, and Books. She demonstrated the use of special characters in the search box such as " ", AND, OR, and * which can be refined by using the ''Google'' Advanced Search page. | ||
Robinson also demonstrated the use of <ctrl>-p and <ctrl>-f to print a webpage or find a word or phrase on a webpage. | Robinson also demonstrated the use of <ctrl>-p and <ctrl>-f to print a webpage or find a word or phrase on a webpage. (Works on computers using Microsoft Operating System. If using an Apple computer, substitute the Command Key for the Control Key.) | ||
'''''Google'' ''Images''''' | '''''Google'' ''Images''''' | ||
Robinson did a ''Google'' search on one of her relatives and clicked on Images. She found a photo she had never seen that someone had posted on a Flickr website. She would have never found this if she hadn't looked in Images. This will pull up images from other countries, but they will be after all the US sources. | Robinson did a ''Google'' search on one of her relatives and clicked on Images (in upper right-hand corner of ''Google'' search page). She found a photo she had never seen before that someone had posted on a ''Flickr'' website. She would have never found this if she hadn't looked in Images. This will pull up images from other countries, but they will be after all of the US sources. | ||
'''Using Quotes''' | '''Using Quotes''' | ||
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'''''Google'' ''Alerts''''' | '''''Google'' ''Alerts''''' | ||
This only works if you have a ''Google'' account, and you are signed into your account. It allows you to specify a phrase for ''Google'' to look for on a regular basis, and ''Google'' will email you when someone posts something with that phrase. This does a worldwide search. | The easy way to find this feature is to search for "Google Alerts." This only works if you have a ''Google'' account, and you are signed into your account. It allows you to specify a phrase for ''Google'' to look for on a regular basis, and ''Google'' will email you when someone posts something with that phrase. This does a worldwide search. | ||
'''''Google'' ''Earth''''' | '''''Google'' ''Earth''''' | ||
This is useful for finding cemeteries, especially private cemeteries where homesteaders buried family members on their private land. An attendee said he used it for finding parcel records. Note that digital photos nowadays have GPS coordinates encoded into them, so you can use ''Google Earth'' or ''Google Maps'' to locate where a photo was taken. | This can be found in the upper right-hand corner of the ''Google'' search page by clicking on the 3x3 matrix of dots to the right of Images. This will display a list of all the extra ''Google'' goodies. Or you can just search for "Google Earth." This feature is useful for finding cemeteries, especially private cemeteries where homesteaders buried family members on their private land. An attendee said he used it for finding parcel records. Note that digital photos nowadays have GPS coordinates encoded into them, so you can use ''Google Earth'' or ''Google Maps'' to locate where a photo was taken. | ||
'''''Google Books''''' | '''''Google Books''''' | ||
Use this to search for book authors or books that contain ancestor names. Books published by Daughters of the American Revolution (DAR), SAR (sons), and CAR (children) and the Huguenot Society are all big into genealogy. Most books on ''Google Books'' will no longer be copyrighted since the copyright expires on very old books. But others may still be copyrighted, and you will have to request that they send you a copy of the page that your ancestor is on. | |||
'' | '''Using AND and OR''' | ||
Say you wanted to find webpages that had two ancestor names and a location. An example of this would be to enter into the Google search box the following: | |||
"James Jubal Robinson" AND "Dora Lee Stinebaugh" AND "Torrance County" | |||
AND must be in all caps. If you wanted to look for either one or the other name in the same location, you would search on the following: | |||
"James Jubal Robinson" OR "Dora Lee Stinebaugh" AND "Torrance County" | |||
If you wanted to look for a name with several variants of the last name, see this example: | |||
"James" AND "Kates" OR "Kaits" OR "Katz" | |||
'''Specifying Date Ranges''' | |||
To specify a date range in your search, use two dots (..) between the dates. For example: | |||
"Joseph" OR Giuseppe" AND "Massaro" OR "Massara" 1880..1950 | |||
This example checks for two variants in the first name, two variants in the last name, and a date range from 1880 to 1950. | |||
'''Wildcard *''' | |||
If you don't know some of the letters in a name, you can use asterisks. For example" | |||
"Frieda * Heywood" | |||
will help you find what her middle initial or name is. | |||
"Fr* Heywood" | |||
will help you find what her first name is. | |||
'''Minus Signs''' | |||
What if your name has a common use which you don't want to get results from. For example, a search on "James Mustang" will bring up many entries on the Mustang car or horse. Eliminate these results by using the minus sign as follows: | |||
"James Mustang" -mustang car -mustang horse | |||
The minus sign must be next to the word to be eliminated with no space. | |||
'''''Google Advanced Search''''' | |||
The easiest way to get to this is to search for Google Advanced Search. This will bring up a webpage with many different ways for you to constrain your search. It also lists all the shortcuts (like *, -, AND, OR). | |||
'''In Closing''' | |||
Robinson wrapped up the lesson with some impressive statistics on just how much data is out there on the Internet. For example, at the beginning of 2020, there were 44 zetabytes of data on the internet (2 to the 70th power of bytes). In 2023, the number of bytes on the internet is 40 times bigger than the number of stars in the observable universe. | |||
== Class notes for 2022 == | == Class notes for 2022 == | ||
''All of the classes for 2022 were recorded. To see any of these videos, please contact Craig Noorlander at the FamilySearch Center.'' | ''All of the classes for 2022 were recorded. To see any of these videos, please contact Craig Noorlander at the FamilySearch Center.'' | ||