Columnists

The Genealogy Corner… It’s Time For Some Cold, Hard Facts

Issue 36.10

You’re not going to be able to read every book that you want. You’ll never have time to watch all of your favorite shows. The house will never be clean enough. There will always be another errand to run. The grass will continue to grow. Everything you buy will need to be dusted, repaired, maintained or disposed of in some way.

This is not a critique of any lack of organizational skills on your part, or a reason to give up altogether. Rather, it’s a statement of freedom.

When you know that life will still be waiting for you tomorrow–no matter what–it gives you the freedom to make today count as much as possible. “Someday” is right now. Anytime — And that can be exciting, if you let it.

If we ever hope to reach our biggest goals, we have to get started!

FamilySearch Indexing:  From the Indexing Web site at http://indexing.familysearch.org, click on Get Started.

FamilySearch Record Search:  How to start a search at http://search.labs.familysearch.org/recordsearch/start.html#start

Name fields

Type the name to be searched. Abbreviations or initials may be used. A name field may also be left empty or typed with a wildcard. 

Wildcard Rules
The wildcard character (*) can be used to extend the search range. For instance, John* would return John, Johnson, Johnston, and so on. It can be used in the First Name or Last Name field, but it can be used only in one field per search.  Use of a wildcard may return the error “Too many results were returned from the wildcard search to be displayed” if used improperly.

The wildcard can be used only at the end of the text, not in front. For instance, John* is okay but not *ston.  Jo* cannot be used because the system requires at least three letters in front of the asterisk.
Wildcards only work with Exact and Close matches. The use of other wildcards, such as a question mark (?) in place of one letter, are under development, but cannot be used at this time.

Shanna Jones is a professional genealogist. For additional information, Shanna can be reached at (435) 628-4900 or shannasjones@msn.com.

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