Tuesday, February 7, 2017

The Family History Library's New Discovery Center




Anyone who has been to the Family History Library in Salt Lake City in the past year or year and a half, you're probably wondering when construction on the first floor would ever end. Well it's over and the new Discovery Center has been unveiled. Its official opening is tomorrow. It's spectacular. And it's a ton of fun. Kind of like a candy store.

Today the RootsTech Ambassadors were invited to take a tour. We were each provided an iPad that we used to log into our FamilySearch account. Then we docked the ipad to one of the stations and played away.

I hadn't added myself to Family Tree so I had to quickly hop on a computer and get that done. One of my parents was already in the tree so once I linked myself up, I was off and running. It was so much fun, I ended up adding my other parent's information so I would have both halves of my family tree.

First up was a map of the world with dots for the birthplaces of each ancestor. You can zoom in on a particular area of the world to investigate further.

You can look at vintage postcards from the various locations your ancestors are from. This is from my hometown of Seattle, Washington.

You can check out who you are related to. Word of warning. There may be errors. And there are some duzies. People have added the wrong parent child relationship on a few lines so I will have to go in and make corrections. I'll add the documentary evidence to back up the linkages to help other researchers.

One ancestor has a story attached to him. How cool is that?


Want to get an idea of what your make up is? There's a selection for that too. Again, it's only as good as the information that goes into your tree but I think mine is decently close. I just need to research those Colonial American lines to find out where they came from for sure!

RootsTech officially begins tomorrow. Stay tuned.

Disclaimer:  I (Michelle Goodrum) am a RootsTech 2017 Ambassador and received complimentary registration to RootsTech along with other perks.
Any opinions expressed are my own.

 © 2017, copyright Michelle Goodrum

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