Mocavo and Findmypast are coming together

I am a customer of both Findmypast and Mocavo and from the latter I received this email last week ... I have bolded and underlined a statement regarding FREE Mocavo content remaining as such.

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We wanted to let you know that in the coming months Mocavo will be coming together with its sister site, Findmypast. This will create a single experience for our US customers in a move that aims to deliver a more focused, efficient and comprehensive service to US family historians.

Mocavo's Story
We launched back in March 2011 when, only three months old, Family Tree Magazine named us as one of the best 101 genealogy websites of 2011. In 2012 we released The Free Yearbook collection and since then we’ve continued to publish hundreds of records and archives every day. We’d like to thank you, our customers, for being there with us as we’ve continued to grow.

We are now in the process of moving all Mocavo site content to Findmypast so you’ll soon be able to enjoy everything currently available on Mocavo and more. As part of our 'Free Forever' promise, Mocavo subscribers will continue to enjoy free access to all of the same records that were previously published for free on Mocavo. We will be transferring your account over to Findmypast soon so stay tuned for updates.

What's next?

You don't need to do anything just now. When we bring the two sites together, we'll be in touch with specific information about your account and some how-to guides that will help make the most of the new experience.

How does this move affect you?

• You'll still benefit from the same great content you’ve been enjoying on Mocavo and this will all be available on Findmypast soon. In addition, you'll be able to take advantage of hundreds of millions of new and exclusive US records to further enhance the experience for US family historians.
• Findmypast has more British and Irish records than anyone else and is adding new records from the US and other locales every single week, so you’ll be able to take advantage of these to help your family history search. You’ll be able to explore nearly 8 billion names now and hundreds of millions of new names coming this year alone!
• You can easily import your family tree and we’ll start to hint against names that we find in the archives to help you discover more about your family and even find relatives you never knew existed.

About Findmypast

Currently the home to billions of names, including the largest collections of Irish records and British Parish records, military records and the British Newspaper Archive, not to mention the 1939 Register. It currently has a plethora of US records and will soon be home to all the Mocavo records once the two sites come together.

Findmypast has a free and easy-to-use family tree builder and it releases new records every week to keep your family history search alive.

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copyright © National Genealogical Society, 3108 Columbia Pike, Suite 300, Arlington, Virginia 22204-4370. http://www.ngsgenealogy.org.

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NGS does not imply endorsement of any outside advertiser or other vendors appearing in this blog. Any opinions expressed by guest authors are their own and do not necessarily reflect the view of NGS.

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Republication of UpFront articles is permitted and encouraged for non-commercial purposes without express permission from NGS. Please drop us a note telling us where and when you are using the article. Express written permission is required if you wish to republish UpFront articles for commercial purposes. You may send a request for express written permission to UpFront@ngsgenealogy.org. All republished articles may not be edited or reworded and must contain the copyright statement found at the bottom of each UpFront article.

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Think your friends, colleagues, or fellow genealogy researchers would find this blog post interesting? If so, please let them know that anyone can read past UpFront with NGS posts or subscribe!

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Suggestions for topics for future UpFront with NGS posts are always welcome. Please send any suggested topics to UpfrontNGS@mosaicrpm.com

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Unless indicated otherwise or clearly an NGS Public Relations piece, Upfront with NGS posts are written by Diane L Richard, editor, Upfront with NGS.

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Want to learn more about interacting with the blog, please read Hyperlinks, Subscribing and Comments -- How to Interact with Upfront with NGS Blog posts!

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Mocavo’s Back to School Special: FREE Access to Universal Search Weekend (ends Sunday 11pm)

From Mocavo ...

What better way to top off Mocavo’s Back to School Week than with an Open Access to Universal Search weekend? Usually you need to be a Mocavo Gold member to search all of our databases at once, but for this weekend only, you can search more than 420,000 databases to your heart’s content. Kick start your research today and see who you will discover.

Start Searching Now

If you would need a little help getting started, check out the Mocavo Gold Faceted Search Tutorial.

Don’t forget, you must be logged in to your Mocavo account to take advantage of the Open Access weekend.

These premium search features are generally available to Mocavo Gold members. If you decide that you enjoy the premium features of Mocavo Gold, consider joining our revolution and becoming a part of the Mocavo Gold community.

We wish you a successful weekend full of discoveries!

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NGS does not imply endorsement of any outside advertiser or other vendors appearing in this blog. Any opinions expressed by guest authors are their own and do not necessarily reflect the view of NGS.

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Republication of UpFront articles is permitted and encouraged for non-commercial purposes without express permission from NGS. Please drop us a note telling us where and when you are using the article. Express written permission is required if you wish to republish UpFront articles for commercial purposes. You may send a request for express written permission to UpFront@ngsgenealogy.org. All republished articles may not be edited or reworded and must contain the copyright statement found at the bottom of each UpFront article.

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Think your friends, colleagues, or fellow genealogy researchers would find this blog post interesting? If so, please let them know that anyone can read past UpFront with NGS posts or subscribe!

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

Suggestions for topics for future UpFront with NGS posts are always welcome. Please send any suggested topics to UpfrontNGS@mosaicrpm.com

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

Unless indicated otherwise or clearly an NGS Public Relations piece, Upfront with NGS posts are written by Diane L Richard, editor, Upfront with NGS.

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Want to learn more about interacting with the blog, please read Hyperlinks, Subscribing and Comments -- How to Interact with Upfront with NGS Blog posts!

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findmypast Purchases Origins.net and Mocavo -- what do you think?

Two somewhat big announcements of genealogy acquisitions were recently made.  These were reported via many news outlets and hopefully you were on vacation (and away from news) and maybe haven’t yet heard that:

1. FindMyPast buys Origins.net

2. Mocavo Acquired By Findmypast: A New Chapter Begins

Do read the articles for the full details.  For example, the Mocavo announcement mentions

“Mocavo’s promise to provide free access to family history records on an individual database level forever. Toward that commitment, Findmypast is announcing today that the full indexes to the US Census from 1790 to 1940 are available for free at Mocavo.com.”

Additionally, we reported a couple of weeks ago in In case you missed the news -- Ancestry.com dropping several services that Ancestry.com is dropping five of its services.

What do you think about these bits of news?  Do they benefit our family history and genealogical community?

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copyright © National Genealogical Society, 3108 Columbia Pike, Suite 300, Arlington, Virginia 22204-4370. http://www.ngsgenealogy.org.

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

Want to learn more about interacting with the blog, please read Hyperlinks, Subscribing and Comments -- How to Interact with Upfront with NGS Blog posts!

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

NGS does not imply endorsement of any outside advertiser or other vendors appearing in this blog. Any opinions expressed by guest authors are their own and do not necessarily reflect the view of NGS.

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~ 

Republication of UpFront articles is permitted and encouraged for non-commercial purposes without express permission from NGS. Please drop us a note telling us where and when you are using the article. Express written permission is required if you wish to republish UpFront articles for commercial purposes. You may send a request for express written permission to UpFront@ngsgenealogy.org. All republished articles may not be edited or reworded and must contain the copyright statement found at the bottom of each UpFront article.

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Follow NGS via Facebook, YouTube, Google+, Twitter

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

Think your friends, colleagues, or fellow genealogy researchers would find this blog post interesting? If so, please let them know that anyone can read past UpFront with NGS posts or subscribe!

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

Suggestions for topics for future UpFront with NGS posts are always welcome. Please send any suggested topics to UpfrontNGS@mosaicrpm.com

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

Unless indicated otherwise or clearly an NGS Public Relations piece, Upfront with NGS posts are written by Diane L Richard, editor, Upfront with NGS.

SimilarSiteCheck -- a neat & sometimes useful search tool and not just for genealogical research!

Search, search, search ... we are always searching for new information and sources.

We do much searching on the internet.  You may use Google, Mocavo, or any of a myriad of other search engines as we ferret out the genealogical gems to be found in the online and offline worlds.  We frequently run into duplicated information, “hits” completely unrelated to what we seek, spam websites and much more.  We are always seeking “better” ways to search the internet for what’s valuable to us.

ResearchBuzz introduced me to a site called SimilarSiteCheck.

“In order to find similar websites for a given domain Similarsitecheck analyzes the entire content as well as external links for the webpage. During the analysis we collect the most important keywords and phrases for a webpage. To actually calculate the alternative websites we search for the found keywords and phrases in our database, compare the sites and get a similarity score for the domains.”

What a neat idea. Any tool that might improve the efficiency and effectiveness of doing online searches gets a thumbs up from me. This website is German-based with an interface in either English or German.

It’s incredibly easy to use.  You enter the URL for a website of interest and then click the arrow.  The results are returned below.

Do know that for some websites, I did run into issues.  I tried the websites for both the State Library of North Carolina and the State Archives of North Carolina and the site seemed unable to handle these. I would get messages of “invalid domain.”  I also tried the Library of Congress website with the same issues.  It might be that government entity website platforms just are not compatible.

I then tried www.familysearch.org and it gave a result of 49 similar webpages.  Possibly because it is German-based, the results seemed skewed to a lot of UK websites.  It might also be language usage – are the terms family history et al used less on US websites?

I then entered the URL for New River Notes (a regional NC/VA website) and the results were kind of all over the place as you can see from this image.  Though I might want to rend a cottage or condominium, those are not websites that will help my genealogy research.  I tried a few other searches and received equally entertaining and eclectic mixes of suggested websites.

So, as with many tools, it might not be helpful.  On the other hand, if it guides you to just one “new-to-you” website with valuable information, then it’s helped.

When you play around with it, let us know if it guided you to a website which is new to you and relevant.

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copyright © National Genealogical Society, 3108 Columbia Pike, Suite 300, Arlington, Virginia 22204-4370. http://www.ngsgenealogy.org.

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

Want to learn more about interacting with the blog, please read Hyperlinks, Subscribing and Comments -- How to Interact with Upfront with NGS Blog posts!

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

NGS does not imply endorsement of any outside advertiser or other vendors appearing in this blog. Any opinions expressed by guest authors are their own and do not necessarily reflect the view of NGS.

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~ 

Republication of UpFront articles is permitted and encouraged for non-commercial purposes without express permission from NGS. Please drop us a note telling us where and when you are using the article. Express written permission is required if you wish to republish UpFront articles for commercial purposes. You may send a request for express written permission to UpFront@ngsgenealogy.org. All republished articles may not be edited or reworded and must contain the copyright statement found at the bottom of each UpFront article.

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Follow NGS via Facebook, YouTube, Google+, Twitter

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Think your friends, colleagues, or fellow genealogy researchers would find this blog post interesting? If so, please let them know that anyone can read past UpFront with NGS posts or subscribe!

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

Suggestions for topics for future UpFront with NGS posts are always welcome. Please send any suggested topics to UpfrontNGS@mosaicrpm.com

Mocavo Announces Genealogy Karma -- a new genealogy "help" community to fill void left by the loss of RAOGK

I’m sure that many of you are familiar with Random Acts of Genealogical Kindness (RAOGK), created by Bridgett and Doc Schneider. For 12 years it provided a resource to help genealogists to document their ancestors while also providing a way for genealogist to help the genealogical community.  I suspect that all of us have benefited from the “kindness” and “hard work” of strangers in our quest to learn more about our family.

To try and fill the void that was created with the demise of RAOGK in 2011, Mocavo has launched Genealogy Karma.  Read more about the launch here and do visit the website.

Do you volunteer with Genealogy Karma?  Tell us a bit about the assistance you have provided.

Did someone via Genealogy Karma assist you?  Tell us how.

Are you aware of other genealogy “help” communities that you are aware of?  Let us know about such!

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copyright © National Genealogical Society, 3108 Columbia Pike, Suite 300, Arlington, Virginia 22204-4370. http://www.ngsgenealogy.org.

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

Want to learn more about interacting with the blog, please read Hyperlinks, Subscribing and Comments -- How to Interact with Upfront with NGS Blog posts!

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

NGS does not imply endorsement of any outside advertiser or other vendors appearing in this blog.

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~ 

Republication of UpFront articles is permitted and encouraged for non-commercial purposes without express permission from NGS. Please drop us a note telling us where and when you are using the article. Express written permission is required if you wish to republish UpFront articles for commercial purposes. You may send a request for express written permission to UpFront@ngsgenealogy.org. All republished articles may not be edited or reworded and must contain the copyright statement found at the bottom of each UpFront article.

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

Follow NGS via Facebook, YouTube, Google+, Twitter

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

Think your friends, colleagues, or fellow genealogy researchers would find this blog post interesting? If so, please let them know that anyone can read past UpFront with NGS posts or subscribe!

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

Suggestions for topics for future UpFront with NGS posts are always welcome. Please send any suggested topics to UpfrontNGS@mosaicrpm.com

Mocavo News -- FREE Scanning Service & Community Digitization Grant

Mocavo has recently made two announcements of interest to the genealogical community.

Image was part of original Mocavo blog post

1. Mocavo Announces Free Scanning Service

It always seems like there aren’t enough hours in the day or enough days in the week, doesn’t it?  Take a look around you.  Do you have piles of research laying around?  Old books gathering dust? Historical documents sitting in boxes?

From now until the end of the year we will scan your documents, send you a digital copy, and put them online at Mocavo — for FREE!

We will even send your materials back to you, if you choose.  We work with our community to bring all of the world’s genealogical information online for free putting everyone’s family history within reach.  We are bringing lots and lots of historical information and databases to Mocavo; but, don’t let us have all the fun.  Join in!

The most important piece of your genealogy puzzle might be lying in someone else's attic or basement.  In fact, your dusty pile of documents could hold the clue to solve another genealogist's riddle. Let us knock the dust off and help you tell your story to the world.

Learn more about Mocavo’s Free Scanning Service at mocavo.com/freescanning

Image was part of original Mocavo blog post

2. Announcing the Mocavo Community Digitization Grant

Through ReadyMicro, Mocavo’s digitization group, we are pleased to make available a $25,000 grant to enable other stewards of genealogical content to share that information with the world.

Mocavo seeks proposals from organizations that care for genealogical content, archives, or historical records that they wish to make freely available online.  Materials proposed for digitization and/or indexing should be unique and provide clear value to a broad number of genealogists. ReadyMicro will digitize these materials and, in collaboration with the grant recipient, extract associated metadata.  Mocavo will create an online database from the collection which will be freely available at Mocavo.com as well as the grant recipient’s website.

The Mocavo Community Digitization Grant provides the grant recipient with the following benefits - $25,000 of digitization services including:

• Digital media organized into a searchable database
• Unlimited display and distribution rights for the resulting digital media
• An online version of the database which may be presented on the grant recipient’s website

More information on the program as well as the application submission form can be found at mocavo.com/grant

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copyright © National Genealogical Society, 3108 Columbia Pike, Suite 300, Arlington, Virginia 22204-4370. http://www.ngsgenealogy.org.

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

NGS does not imply endorsement of any outside advertiser or other vendors appearing in this blog.

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~ 

Republication of UpFront articles is permitted and encouraged for non-commercial purposes without express permission from NGS. Please drop us a note telling us where and when you are using the article. Express written permission is required if you wish to republish UpFront articles for commercial purposes. You may send a request for express written permission to UpFront@ngsgenealogy.org. All republished articles may not be edited or reworded and must contain the copyright statement found at the bottom of each UpFront article.

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

Follow NGS via Facebook, YouTube, Google+, Twitter

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

Think your friends, colleagues, or fellow genealogy researchers would find this blog post interesting? If so, please let them know that anyone can read past UpFront with NGS posts or subscribe!

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

Suggestions for topics for future UpFront with NGS posts are always welcome. Please send any suggested topics to UpfrontNGS@mosaicrpm.com