New Family Search Website Update

Im not supposed to be doing this but since I have made so many wonderful people here on ranchos, I couldnt keep this to myself. The new website isn't officially launched but is now functioning as Beta 2 or 3 is now starting. It's quite LONG! The new website can only be accessed my church members for now but to see if we can play around with it before it goes public.

Here's the website if anyone wants to see at least the Home Page:
www.new.familysearch.org

In the future we will all have to register. The project is at a goal by 2012 all the microfilm will be scanned and the official webpage will go Live. BUT if you like you can sign up to help with the new microfilm, the email address is at the bottom. Im going to register soon. This is different from the first registration if anyof you participated in the first website at FamilySearch Labs.

Heres an update:

New FamilySearch
The LDS Church is currently developing a web application for church membership (and, eventually, everyone) to be able to interact with a very large, unified database full of connected genealogical information. When fully released, it will replace the current FamilySearch.org.
Most of the development work on the new system takes place in offices in the Joseph Smith Memorial Building on Temple Square, Salt Lake City, Utah.
Some prominent features of the new website are:
Support for multiple assertions on facts, allowing people to "agree to disagree".
Very comprehensive source citations, including links to source images. This promised linking service may not be available in earlier versions. Documents scanned from the Church's 2.4 million rolls of microfilmed vital records, from around the world, will eventually be linked to individuals in the system. These films are currently being scanned and indexed, for more details see the Church's FamilySearchIndexing web site.
Several features will be specific to the membership of the LDS Church, facilitating temple ordinance work.
This new system will be a one world pedigree of linked families. Users will not be able to change others entries but may post their disagreements next to other's versions. Users will be able to edit their own prior entries.
The Beta2 test version has a mapping utility which maps locations where an individual has resided. By clicking on the link a pop up displays the events that took place at that location, i.e.: birth, marriage, death, etc.
The new system will be released in phases starting with smaller temple districts for members of the Church only. After temple districts in all areas of the world are online, it will be opened to everyone.
Digitization and indexing projects
The Family History Library (FHL) is in the process of digitizing its entire microfilm collection. ScanStone, which was developed by the LDS Church, is a system (both hardware and software) to rapidly create digital images of genealogical records contained on microfilm. When fully implemented, the FHL will be able to convert 370,000 rolls of microfilm per year into digital images. It is estimated that the digitizing project will be completed about 2012.
An online index to the digitized records is also being created using FamilySearch Indexing software developed by the LDS Church. The church hopes to recruit tens of thousands of volunteers to complete the indexing project. Volunteers can participate by going to the Church's FamilySearchIndexing web site. The databases containing the digital images and indexes will be added to the FamilySearch website as they become available.
By now most of the genealogical community has heard about the new FamilySearch™ system the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints is developing, but fewer have heard of the Help Center. The Help Center is a web–based program designed to provide a self-service support environment for the new FamilySearch.

Among the exciting additions of the Help Center are the Research Advice Forums. These online communities will provide users a chance to ask their research questions and allow other users with research experience to share their knowledge. The forums will be available in eight languages, and will eventually cover every country of the world.

Research Advice Forums

FamilySearch Support (part of the Family and Church History Department) has been given the task to provide family history research support worldwide. Since volunteers in family history centers and genealogical societies collectively possess so much research knowledge, FamilySearch Support has created an online environment where these people can share their knowledge with those looking for help with their family history.

The Research Advice Forums are different than any other genealogical forum online. How many times have you asked a question in an online forum and never received an answer? Research Advice Forums will be different. FamilySearch Support will actively manage its forums and notify the forum moderator of any questions that have gone unanswered for a given amount of time. The forum moderator will then ask a research specialist to answer the user’s question.

The forums also have a dynamic search feature. Every time a question is asked and answered it is automatically added to the Help Center’s knowledge base of answers. The knowledge base contains forum posts, websites, authored articles, and Family History Library publications. As questions are asked and answered, websites added, and new articles written, the Help Center’s knowledge base will continue to grow.

Testing the New System

The new FamilySearch beta 2 test is coming soon. For beta 2, FamilySearch Support is looking for individuals with research experience to help test the forums. We will be asking beta testers to do a series of tasks in the forums designed to test the system’s features to make sure they are ready for public use. Testers will be asked to spend about 1-2 hours per week or more if they choose. Anyone participating in the Research Advice Forums testing will also have full access to the new FamilySearch. If you are interested in helping us test our forums and being a part of the new FamilySearch email us at:
fch-researchsupport@ldschurch.org (please include “Renee Zamora blog” the subject line of your email).

~Daniel Mendez del Camino~