Online Digital Genealogy Data is a Fragile Thing

A thought-provoking article by Jon Christian has been posted at the Slate website. The article is titled Deleting the Family Tree – When Ancestry.com shuttered its social network for relatives, it erased 10 years’ worth of my family’s correspondence and memories. The title alone is enough to jar a genealogist into considering the value and fragility of their digital data.

In this case, Mr. Christian’s family had been using MyFamily.com as a convenient place to keep “family memories safe and secure. No matter what.” When Ancestry.com shut down the service in 2014, folks were warned to download their data from the site. However, it seems that correspondence kept on the site didn’t download. Pictures weren’t a problem. They downloaded just fine. One of Christian’s aunts did the download, and then never checked to see if she got everything… Whoops… Click on the above link to read the unpleasant details.

At this point let me say that I’m a big fan of Ancestry.com. Let me also say that they were at one time head-on-head competitors with Heritage Quest. I had what I thought would be a life-long job with Heritage Quest, lots of stock options and all that stuff… But Ancestry had investors willing to finance the posting of the U.S. Census records, and the parent company of Heritage Quest did not. They also bought Rootsweb, with whom Heritage Quest had their posting contracts – canceling the contracts, and leaving Heritage Quest with few options. So… Ancestry.com won the race. I and a lot of other Heritage Quest employees were out of work. Ancestry grew into the powerhouse they are today. It’s a long story… I could have been bitter about it, but that’s not like me. I got over it, and today appreciate the access to records, as well as the technology at Ancestry. Business decisions are made, for better and for worse. It’s too bad that there have to be winners… and losers…

The closure of MyFamily.com is just another example of how fragile our digital memories have become. We now have the ability to take and store thousands of photos. We scan and upload thousands of documents. We go merrily along thinking that all this “family memories safe and secure – No matter what” claims are going to be upheld – no matter what. We store our memories on the cloud somewhere, blissfully unaware that data is so very, very fragile. But ah, we have back-ups – or we should have… I’m sorry folks, but back-ups are fragile things too. Who’s to say that the technology of the 22nd century will be able to read your backed-up files? What will the cloud be in 2115?

I have digitized thousands of documents. I even lecture on the subject of digitizing our documents. I still recommend it. But keep in mind that I can only say that I’ve “lost” a paper document or two in my 40 years of research – while I’ve lost hundreds, if not thousands through corrupted backups, no backups, or no time to label those thousands of pictures properly… I’ve had issues with online backups as well as backups on hard drives and floppy disks. In the long run, my paper has been safer than my digital stuff.

If you’re trusting your memories to an online website, every now and then, I recommend downloading a copy of the data – including any documents attached so easily to your Ancestry tree. What if your good fortune should run out and you can’t renew your Ancestry subscription? I’m a great fan of all this digital stuff, but I also realize that there’s risk involved – just as there is with the possibility that the house will burn and your paper files will go up in flames. Then you’ll be happy that you have the digital files setting on that cloud – some company’s server – somewhere.

About Leland Meitzler

Leland K. Meitzler founded Heritage Quest in 1985, and has worked as Managing Editor of both Heritage Quest Magazine and The Genealogical Helper. He currently operates Family Roots Publishing Company (www.FamilyRootsPublishing.com), writes daily at GenealogyBlog.com, writes the weekly Genealogy Newsline, conducts the annual Salt Lake Christmas Tour to the Family History Library, and speaks nationally, having given over 2000 lectures since 1983.

5 Replies to “Online Digital Genealogy Data is a Fragile Thing”

  1. Currently, I am unable to see most of the information I have submitted to Ancestry.com because Ancestry writes I have an outdated browser. I tried to update the browser but cannot until I update my operating system. When I update my operating system, I ought to update all of my software, If I am going to go through all of that expense & time & frustration, I ought to update the hardware too.

    The digital data is there, but one must expend the money, time, & keep up with the education needed to maintain the ability to use the equipment to access the digital data.

    I use the digital, but I love the peace and serenity of paper books & other documents.

    Sadly, Ancestry.com is making genealogy more of a hobby for the rich. I appreciate Ancestry.com’s value-added by making documents available that would not exist anywhere on other web-sites run by societies, religious organizations, and governments. The indexes to those documents, made at their expense, are indispensible.

    near Grove, OK

  2. I don’t rely on any one website to keep my information. I download the images from Ancestry and keep copies in multiple places.

  3. The “Family Tree” capability at familysearch.org is becoming serious rival to Ancestry. Storing your digital data on both sites increases the probability that it will survive corporate upheavals, especially since familysearch.org is sponsored by the Mormon Church.

  4. I think it is important for all of us to remember that Ancestry.com is no longer a Family History site being run by caring genealogists. It is now a massive corporation run by venture capitalists and pencil pushers. The bottom line is the ONLY consideration. Customers are only numbers in computing a bottom line, our data belongs to Ancestry to do with as they like.

    Look at the 2nd rate DNA product they are pushing, so dumbed down its only value is in being able to upload the data to other sites.

    Look at the sloppy, inaccurate indexing done by people with English as a second language, chosen because they are cheaper, with no concern for accuracy.

    But when people’s data is trashed, put the blame where it belongs – on a company who no longer cares about the customers who made it what it is today.

  5. among the several travesties recently brought on
    by Ancestry.com is the serious trashing of the
    very popular GenForum website… which they somehow
    took over a few years back. Last year they closed
    down new postings to that site, but now they have
    done something much, much worse…

    no one seems to have noticed, but their revamped version
    is a DISASTER; they have really made GenForum practically
    impossible to use— extremely inconvenient to use at best!

    I can no longer employ simple “search” tools to locate much of the information I am certain that I posted or referenced there
    for over 14 years

    ..and many of the Google search “links” to old GenForum posts do not even appear to work at all anymore… many appearances of the message: “That page appears to be missing. Search to find other content.”

    Do you by chance have any idea what in the world is going on?

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