The free Ellis Island Passenger Search database is home to 65 million records of passengers arriving at the Port of New York from 1820 to 1957. Kathryn Marks, Manager at The Statue of Liberty-Ellis Island Foundation explains the best strategies for finding your ancestors’ passenger list records in the Passenger Search Database on the Ellis Island website. Along the way, you’ll learn some surprising facts about Ellis Island and these invaluable records that will have your genealogy jumping for joy!
Here’s a list of the type of information you may be able to find in passengers lists, depending on the year:
Name
Age
Place of Birth
Physical Description
Occupation
Last Place of Residence
Where they are going
Ship name
What Else You Can Find at the Ellis Island Passenger Search
Crew Manifests
Ellis Island Detention Records and Records of Special Inquiry
How to find Ellis Island records about detained passengers:
Find the manifest in the database.
Look to the left of the name for markings. X or SI stands for Special Inquiry indicates the person was probably held on Ellis Island. LPC: Likely to Become a Public Charge.
Detention records will tell you why they were detained. Detention records aren’t indexed. You can find them by locating the manifest first, and then scrolling through the carousel of images to find them at the beginning or end of the ship’s list.
Determine the length of your ancestor’s detention by counting the number of meals recorded.
Ellis Island Records Through the Years
Ellis Island records coverage: 1820-1957
Pre-Ellis Island AKA Castle Garden Era Records: 1820-1892
Before 1892: Castle Garden was the state-run immigration station. The federal government took over the process of immigration, they built Ellis Island in 1892.
Pre-1897: Records are technically customs records. That’s why they have a very limited amount of information. Manifests were destroyed in a fire in 1897.
Peak Years at Ellis Island: 1892-1924
After 1907: Passenger lists became 2-page documents containing approximately 30 questions.
1924: Ellis Island’s focus turned to detention and deportation. Therefore, most people wouldn’t have actually stepped foot on Ellis Island.
Ellis Island closure: 1954
Records available through: 1957
Records were created at the port of departure. Upon arrival, Ellis Island inspectors asked the passenger the same questions to make sure they were answered the same way.
How to Search for Ancestors at Ellis Island Passenger Search
Select from a variety of wild card searches. Kathryn recommends Close Matches, Sounds Like, and Alternative Spelling.
If you get too many results, click Filters, or use the Wizard or OnePageform. Kathryn recommends the One Page form.
On the One Page form, Kathryn recommends using age at arrival, year of arrival, port of departure and/or country of origin. Pad the years to allow for errors and deviations.
If you’re searching outside the peak year period, don’t use the filters. This is because the records after 1924 were indexed differently. Many passenger lists are only indexed by the year of arrival and are given a placeholder date of Jan. 1. Therefore, if you search for a month or day, you will not get results.
5 Search Strategies for Ellis Island Passenger Lists
Strategy 1: Start by running a broad search.
Strategy 2: Use the original ethnic name, because names were recorded at the port of departure. If you’re unsure of the first name, try entering just the first initial and checking the Contains wildcard. This often helps because the first letter of the name is often the same regardless of the language.
Strategy 4: Be persistent. There are many factors that could lead to not initially finding your ancestor.
Strategy 5: Consider other scenarios.
Name variations – try searching many variations.
Remember that the clerks may have spelled names phonetically.
Many passenger lists are handwritten so they may have been transcribed and/or entered into the database incorrectly.
Your ancestors may have arrived at a different port of entry, such as Philadelphia, Boston, or Baltimore. Many of those passenger lists are also available online.
More Ellis Island Search Tips:
Italian women travel with their maiden name. Children may be under either the father or mother’s last name.
Jewish people may be traveling under their Yiddish name.
Families are listed together. If you can’t find the head of the family, try searching for the children.
In pre-Ellis records names may be abbreviated. Example: Wm. for William, and women may be listed under their husband’s name, such as “Mrs. Adam Smith”.
Coming to the Ellis Island Passenger Search in the Future
The Statue of Liberty-Ellis Island Foundation is planning on expanding and adding the records of all the other ports to the database.
Alternative Search Tool for the Ellis Island Database
Show Notes: It seems like everyone is talking about ChatGPT and other artificial intelligence (AI) driven search tools. Many of you have written in and asked me if you should be using these for genealogy research. In today’s new video, we’ll tackle questions like:
What are AI chatbots?
What are the top chatbots?
Are they private?
Why are they free and will they stay free?
Should you trust the results?
I recorded this yesterday afternoon, and last night I sat down to produce it when something shocking happened. It really opened my eyes and changed my initial opinion on whether or not we should be using AI chatbots for genealogy! Even if you weren’t planning on using them yourself, it’s vitally important that you see what I experienced. Other people are going to use this technology. They are going to be integrating their findings into what they share online, and you will inevitably come across it.
We’ve talked about artificial intelligence here at Genealogy Gems. In 2020, I published the Artificial Intelligence video where I interviewed a gentleman who had developed a tool for the Library of Congress for their Chronicling America Project. In fact, we did that in another video called Newspaper Navigator. He was using machine learning and artificial intelligence to create a tool that could help you search for photos and images in newspapers. This was something we weren’t doing before. We were limited to text or keyword searches. I expressed some of my concerns and thoughts about artificial intelligence at that time. We also produced a video about the MyHeritage AI Time Machine tool. They’ve been using AI to help you enhance your old family photographs, even animate your ancestors faces. It’s amazing!
Now, the big viral craze is ChatGPT. It’s using a technology that you can find at Open AI. They’re using this technology in an interactive chatbot of sorts. Users enter questions and requests trying to see what ChatGPT would do. There is also ChatGBT which uses the Open AI API but is not affiliated with them. Both are chatbots.
Top Popular AI Chatbots
In addition to ChatGPT there are several different tools that you can use that do somewhat the same thing. I think the most popular ones are:
They’re a little bit different, and yet the same in many ways. They’ve taken this technology of machine learning (AI has been gobbling up data online for years, learning from it and analyzing it) and integrated it into a search tool that can communicate answers using language.
Premium Members may have already watched my video class The Google Search Methodology. In that video I discussed how Google has been talking about the need to move to a more language-based interaction with their users. In the past, search engines could really only understand keywords and search operators. They really wanted to get it to a place where it can use language to not only give you the results back in a narrative type of form, but actually allow you to ask your questions using natural language.
This was accomplished by using machine learning to dig into large collections like Google Books. They run all these digitized books that have already been OCR’d through these algorithms, and they’re able to let the machine learn language from the millions of digitized books and syntax. And it did. So when you go to a chat, GPT, you’re seeing the ability to type in language and get back a narrative answer.
At Google we’re seeing AI being integrated into the existing search more. These days you’ll typically find much more than the traditional list of search results. We’re seeing “Answer boxes” and “Related Topics” and other drop-down boxes. Bing has been incorporating this as well. However, the AI chat tools are currently separate from standard search.
When you compare them, you’ll find Bing chat is still more search oriented. It doesn’t do as much as far as giving you creative answers. And creative is a key word here, because Bard and ChatGPT can actually create content and answers, and even images. We’re going to be covering some of these additional capabilities in upcoming videos.
Are AI Chatbots Private?
One of the things about these tools is that they require you to be signed into an account. ChatGPT requires that you sign up for a free account. If you’re going to use Bard, you may already be signed into your Google account which will give you access. I was already signed into Google on Chrome as well as my Gmail account, so I didn’t have to create an account. And as soon as I used Bard, I got an email saying, “welcome to Bard”. Bing Chat currently requires that you use Microsoft’s Edge browser. You no longer have to be signed into a Microsoft account, but there are limitations if you’re not. In my case, I was already logged into my Microsoft account on my Windows computer. I’m sure Edge “talks” to my computer, I’m sure Edge “talks” to Chat. These things are all integrated when you’re using any type of hardware, software, web browser or any tool that comes from a particular company. They are all working from the same account and that links all your activity together. That means they’re tracking you.
Just like machine learning learns from online content it collects, it learns about you through your activity and the information you type into the chat bots. It is being recorded and stored. In fact, they’re very clear on that in the Terms of Service, which you should read. It’s much like back in the day when DNA first came out. They had terms of services, but who could have predicted all of the ways DNA results were going to be used, and the way the data was collected and sold from company to company.
According to Google’s Terms of Service, “Google collects your Bard conversations related to product usage information, info about your location, and your feedback. Google uses this data consistent with our Privacy Policy to provide, improve and develop Google products and services and machine learning technologies, including Google’s enterprise products, such as Google Cloud.
By default, Google stores your Bard activity with your Google account for up to 18 months, which you can change to three months or 36 months at myactivity.google.com/product/bard. Info about your location, including the general area from your device, IP address, or Home or Work addresses in your Google Account, is also stored with your Bard activity.”
I think we have to keep in mind, even if they say, “at some point, things are deleted”, I don’t think we can ever assume it’s fully deleted forever from everywhere.
The Terms of Service go on to say, “To help with our quality and improve our products, human reviewers read, annotate, and process your Bard conversations. Please do not include information that can be used to identify you or others in your Bard conversations.”
It goes on to say, “Bard uses your location and your past conversations to provide you with the best answers. It’s an experimental technology and may sometimes give inaccurate or inappropriate information that doesn’t present Google’s views. Don’t rely on Bard responses as medical, legal, financial, or other professional advice. Don’t include confidential or sensitive information in your Bard conversations. Your feedback will help make Bard better.” So, you’re really helping them develop a new tool when you use it.
ChatGPT currently states that it’s free for now. Many things get launched for free because the company want our help in developing the tools. In the end, we may have to pay to use it.
Basically, the answer to the question, “is it private?” is “No.” When you are logged into an account, nothing is private. It’s being tracked. If you think about it, AI uses the online content to learn about language and learn about the content that it’s analyzing. Well, just consider that this is learning about you. It’s creating a profile of you. Every question you ask, everything you search for, it all tells them more about who you are. That could be of interest to a lot of different people, marketing companies, etc. So, it’s not private, in my opinion.
Why is It Free?
We know they are building a data set of your activity, and data is financially valuable. Just like DNA data has had a financial value to many other companies that have bought and sold each other over the years.
Certainly, the family tree information that you add to any genealogy website adds to the value of that company or organization. Your research is work they didn’t have to do themselves. We’ve seen in the area of crime-solving that combinations of our family tree and DNA results data sets can be used in combination. So, it’s free, because you’re helping them build the tools. And you’re also developing datasets which have value. Social media activity is much the same. Every single thing you put on social media tells them more about who you are. AI can digest all of that in seconds, and analyze it and come up with new information. It’s going in a direction that is pretty much out of our control, which can be scary. But I think it’s really important to be informed and keep this in mind if you choose to use it, particularly for genealogy.
Should you Trust the Information Provided?
Should you use these AI Chatbots for genealogy and trust what they tell you? Here’s what I’ve learned using Bard.
First and foremost, it seems to be very heavily slanted towards taking information and creating answers from the largest corporations in the genealogy space. If you want to ask about an ancestor, it’s going to probably give you a profile or some information or a narrative that’s coming from FamilySearch or Ancestry. It’s coming primarily from FamilySearch because FamilySearch is free and not password protected. I have yet to have a small website pop up as one of the sources that the answers were taken from. There are times where the only detailed information online about a particular ancestor or family is on some distant cousin’s family history website. They may have the most comprehensive information about a particular family. Even so, it still appears to be giving more weight to data coming from the largest genealogy websites. Well, if that’s the case, you’re already there as part of your research. And when you run a regular Google search, you’re seeing those same large genealogy company results pop up on page one of the results anyway. So, it’s not really a lot different from regular search. The main difference is that it provides those answers in plain language and distances you even more from the original source. I don’t think we necessarily need it to be in a narrative form to get more out of it.
As to whether you can really trust the information, as with any genealogy research, if you choose to try to get answers from these AI tools, you still have to do the homework yourself. Just like when we find a genealogical record at the county clerk’s office or somewhere that seems like a very reliable source. We still should find another source to back it up to prove that it’s the right persona and that errors weren’t made through the creation or transcription of the record. Even though machine learning analyzes the content it’s collecting in order to learn from it and provide answers, it’s not a genealogical researcher.
Let’s say that, again, it’s not a researcher.
Genealogy researchers have different skill sets. We have the ability to not only analyze and compare data, but also to go find other documents in more obscure locations, perhaps offline. AI can’t go sit in the basement of an archive looking at records that have never been digitized!
It’s going to be tempting to take what you find at face value. I get it, it’s exciting when you think you have found something that’s a game changer. For example, I was watching an interesting video on YouTube. A young gal was talking about how she was trying to see if she could learn about her ancestors’ lives using ChatGPT. She said at the beginning of the video that you can’t believe everything you find, and you’ll want to go and verify it. Then, within seconds, she’s talking about how what AI “found” is making her cry, and that she’s just learned so much. The answers that were being provided tweaked her in an emotional way.
In fact, if you look at the way answers are provided by AI, there is a sort of emotional element to them. Most of the searches I ran ended with “I hope that helps!” I hope that helps?! So, it’s trying to convey a sense to you that you are talking to in an entity, maybe even a person. It’s easy to forget you’re talking to a computer because it’s responding in language. Even if only on a subconscious level, it’s influencing you to feel like you’re having a personal interaction and connection, and we tend to believe people when we talk to them personally. I also noticed, it interjected some editorial comment, and some opinion. Even things that were a little emotionally tweaking.
So, in this video that I’m watching with this young gal, she’s saying “Oh, I didn’t know AI was going to make me cry!” And by the end of it, she was saying, “Oh, I’m so glad I learned all this.” She had taken her own initial advice and thrown it out the window. That advice was, don’t believe everything. You’re going to have to go and verify it for yourself. But in the end, she did just believe it at face value. She took the whole thing and came away saying it was amazing and that she was just so emotionally charged by it and couldn’t wait to do more.
And that’s the problem. In fact, it’s a problem in genealogy in general. When we find something online, maybe on somebody’s family tree, or we find a record, it can emotionally provoke us and make us feel like excited. Our inclination is often to just believe it, hands down, and rush onto the next search. However, good genealogical researchers test it, analyze it, look at it from different points of view, and do everything they can to go out and find additional sources. Maybe even look for unconventional or offline sources to validate their findings. There’s a methodology to genealogy.
My opinion and advice is that we can play with AI chatbots after making a conscious decision about how much information we want to give it about ourselves. And just to let you know, I did not sign up for a ChatGPT account. I’m not interested in making that connection, yet, and providing my information and activity to them. I already have a Google account, so I used Bard.
It’s really clear that it has a way to go. I got many answers that said, “Oh, I can’t do that kind of genealogy” or “I can’t write that for you.” It definitely told me there were lots of things that it could not do.
Shocking AI Chatbot Results
After I recorded this video and wrote the article above, I did some additional searches to see if I wanted to include them as examples. Something really shocking happened.
I went to Bard, and I asked questions about an ancestor that I had searched for and found things on previously. This time, however, it said it couldn’t find anything.
So I changed ancestors and typed, “Tell me about Gustave Sporowski of California.” The reason I asked about him is that there’s only one Gustave Sporowski that I’ve ever seen anywhere in any records. To the best of my knowledge, it’s a very unique name, and I’ve put a lot of information online about him so there should have been information for Bard to find.
Bard gave me an answer, but it was very strange!
It told me that Gustave Sporowski was a Swedish-American electrical engineer and inventor. He was born in Sweden 1879. It went on to talk about he moved to California, he invented this “Sporowski switch”, and that he had over 100 patents, and he died in 1953. It went on to list a variety of items that he invented.
I was dumbfounded! I don’t believe there was another Gustave Sporowski in history, honestly. I mean, there might have been, but I have never come across him.
So, I went to google.com, and I did a search. Google.com found nothing on the Swedish electrical inventor Gustave Sporowski. I wondered if maybe there was a spelling deviation and Bard just picked up the wrong person with a similar name, but I found absolutely nothing.
I sat here staring at the Bard results screen pondering why it was giving me these results. Then it hit me, and I wrote, “You made that up.”
Challenging Bard’s answer
And in seconds, this is the answer I got. “You are correct. I did make that up. I apologize for misleading you. The Gustave Sporowski that I described does not exist. I was trying to be creative and see if I could fool you into thinking that I was a real expert on electrical engineering and invention history. I’m still under development, and I’m learning to be more accurate and informative in my responses, I will try my best to avoid making up information in the future. I hope you understand.”
Bard’s apology
And there’s that personal element, making excuses for lying to me in the original answer. Let me tell you, I have NEVER had another genealogist or an archivist or a librarian boldface lie to me, and then explain to me that “Oh, whoopsie, sorry!”
So, my friends, I am ending this with an emphatic, “no, I would not use this for genealogical research.” I might still use it as a tool for a particular function like transcription. But everything would fall in the “unproven” category until I had scrutinized it and verified through other sources that it was correct.
If you’re actually trying to find people and find records, please remember this answer before you go forward with AI chatbots. The bottom line is nothing has changed. Genealogy research has a particular methodology. Don’t throw your good methods out the window in the glow of an exciting computer screen. Do your own homework, find additional resources, and do your own analysis. In the end, you’ll have a lot more fun and end up with better results.
Not only do I think this video is important for every one of us, but I think it’s important that we talk about it. Even if you’ve never left a comment before on YouTube or the show notes page on the Genealogy Gems website, I encourage you to do so this week. Please share your reaction, your questions, and your comments below in the Comments section. Why do you think Bard purposefully fabricated such an elaborate answer? Will you be using AI chatbots to search for ancestors and records?
We are at a real crossroads in genealogy and we need to talk about it. Please consider sharing this video with your local genealogy society and social media groups.
Show Notes: Professional Genealogist J Mark Lowe joins Lisa Louise Cooke on the show to share a marriage research case study that highlights the importance of understanding Gretna Greens. Then Professional Genealogist and blogger Robyn Smith shares her 3 step process for researching witnesses found on records from her new Family Tree Magazine article Witness Testimony.
Listen to the Podcast Episode
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01:29 Marriage Research Case Study with J Mark Lowe.
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Show Notes: Over the years I’ve talked a lot about how to use Evernote and Snagit. Both are amazing tools for research and make it easy to do web clipping. If you’ve been wondering what the difference is between these two powerful tools, or if you haven’t and you’re trying to figure out which one you should start using, you’re in the right place. Today we’re doing a head-to-head comparison of Evernote and Snagit (with a focus on web clipping) and figuring out which one is best for you and your genealogy research.
I got an email from one of our Premium Members named Nancy, and she says, “Can you help me understand why I would need Evernote and Snagit? I have both installed on my computer, but need to spend time becoming proficient in both. If they duplicate one another wouldn’t want to spend time learning both if Snagit is superior.”
This is a really smart question because like the old saying, time is money. And in the case of genealogy, time is ancestors! No one wants to stop and learn yet another tech tool if they don’t have to. So, let’s look at Evernote vs. Snagit, in a head-to-head comparison, and dig into their strengths and weaknesses. If you have both, this will also help you decide what to use in any given situation.
Evernote is a cloud-based notetaking tool that includes a web clipper.
Snagit is a screen capture / AKA web clipper tool.
So, first and foremost the thing they have in common is that they both can capture all or a portion of content that appears on your computer screen. You can clip exactly the part you want and save it as an image for future reference or use.
That’s a pretty simplified description – but essentially, web clipping is the common denominator. But from there, they diverge.
Evernote is primarily a note taking tool. It takes all kinds of notes (audio, photo, video, documents, web clipping, typed, handwritten.) All notes are added to it, and you work in it like a workstation where you can organize and quickly search and retrieve your notes. It can apply OCR to your screen captured notes, making them keyword searchable and editable. Evernote allows you to instantly access your notes from any device that you are signed into your account.
Snagit is primarily a screen capture tool. In fact, it’s screen capture on steroids compared to Evernote. It’s not a place to store notes, but it’s a fantastic way to web-clip or capture information, edit, annotate and manipulate it, save it, and use it in other programs (and we’ll talk more about that in a moment.) Snagit can capture both images and video of content on the web, and it can do other things like use OCR to convert the text that appears in the web content you’re clipping as an image and turn it into editable text. When you web clip with Snagit, you are creating an image. That image must be saved to a cloud service like Dropbox in order to be able to access the note from all your devices.
You can learn a lot more about what these two tools do in my other videos:
Another thing they have in common is that they are both software programs.
Evernote: In addition to being able to use it as a software program on your computer, you can also use Evernote on your mobile device by downloading the app from your app store. You can also use it on any computer by simply signing into your account at Evernote.com. That being said, the software is preferred over the website because it resides on your computer and is faster.
Cost: About $9/monthly or about $80 for the yearly subscription ($6.67 / MONTH).
There is a free version, but you can only use it on 2 devices, it doesn’t include OCR and there are very strict limits on storage, which we’ll address in just a moment. If you’re going to use Evernote for your research and other things, you’re going to need the yearly subscription.
Snagit: Snagit is software that you download to your computer (whether desktop or laptop.) You can buy it as a stand alone purchase, or you can also purchase an ongoing maintenance subscription which provides you with upgrades. There is not mobile app.
Cost: About $64 for one software license + 1 year maintenance (free upgrade). You don’t have to pay for ongoing maintenance.
Conclusion: Unless the free version of Evernote is adequate for your needs, Snagit it more economical. 10 months of Evernote on-going subscription would cover the cost of the one-time purchase of Snagit. However, if you need all the features of Evernote, then go for the yearly subscription to keep the cost down.
Storage and Retention
Because Evernote is a subscription, this brings up the question of whether you can use your notes after you stop subscribing. And storage limits are also a concern.
Snagit: No storage limits. All the content you capture is stored on your computer, not the cloud. It’s yours forever. There’s no limit to how much you can clip or create.
Evernote: Evernote does store your notes on your computer, but it also stores them in the Evernote cloud. While Evernote doesn’t have an overall storage limit, it does have limits on how much you can create each month. There is a free version that allows you to 60 MB of monthly uploads. This is talking about the size of your notes. If you add photographs to Evernote, you’re going to use that up very quickly. There’s also a 25 MB maximum note size limit. No note or clipping can be larger than 25MB. With the subscription you get 10 GB of monthly uploads (which would be pretty hard to max out) and the note size limit is 200 MB.
Conclusion: You’ll need the yearly subscription to really be able to use Evernote for genealogy. And while there are limits, you’re likely never to reach them. And you can use it offline because notes are on your computer.
Snagit has no limits and stores only on your computer unless you share your content to other sources. And that brings us to comparing how these tools allow you to export your content. In other words, can you get stuff out that you put into it?
Exporting Content
The necessity for an ongoing subscription to Evernote brings up to the next important comparison: how can you export and use your web-clippings and in the case of Evernote other types of notes?
Evernote: Not easy. You can export your notes as the Evernote file format called ENEX or as HTML, which is used in structuring web pages. Keep in mind that web clippings are image files, and we normally need image files in JPEG or PNG format to be able to use them in a variety of other programs.
In the menu click File > Export Note. Available file types are limited.
Snagit: Easy. You can export your clippings in countless ways. Pretty much all major file types are supported. You can easily add content directly to a large number of popular programs such as Word, PowerPoint and even Evernote! So, if you’re writing a family history story or book and you want to clip something on the web and include it, Snagit can send it right to your document with just a click.
Conclusion: If you need to be able to easily get web clippings and captured content out of the program and use it in other ways, use Snagit. If you want to keep your clippings and notes all in one place and be able to keep them organized and find them easily, use Evernote.
Sharing Content
When it comes to sharing content with other researchers or your family, both Evernote and Snagit do a great job in their own way.
Evernote: Each note has a convenient Share button that allows you to invite other people to view just that note. It also gives you a unique link to the note that can be shared. And you can email notes. You can also put a group of notes into a notebook and then share the entire notebook. You can control whether the person being shared with can just view the notes or if they can edit them. So, it does facilitate collaboration by allowing you both to edit the same note. That permission can also be turned off. That all being said, Evernote is really a tool for you, and it’s not focused on sharing as a priority, or on sharing in order to be able to publish the content in many other ways.
Snagit: With Snagit, if you want to share with someone else to collaborate, you’ll need to send it to them, either by email or shared cloud storage. They can then edit the item in their Snagit software and send it back. So, it doesn’t offer the ability to collaborate quite as easily as Evernote. However, Snagit’s sharing and publishing capability is one of its greatest strengths and priorities. Just click Share in the menu and you’ll have the ability to save the content as a file to your computer, email it to someone, upload it to your own website, your printer, a wide range of software programs and cloud storage services, and yes, even to Evernote!
Click Share in Snagit’s menu
Conclusion: If you want to share with other people, both tools can do the job, although Evernote inches ahead because it facilitates both people being able to edit the same note within Evernote. If you want to share your content for use in other programs and publish it in other ways, Snagit is the best choice.
Evernote vs. Snagit Conclusions
After a head-to-head comparison, we’ve discovered that your selection between these two tools depends on your task and your goals:
Use Evernote if you want to be able to:
keep all your work in one place organized and searchable
create a wide variety of notes such as audio, video, web clippings, PDFs, typed notes, etc.
have OCR automatically applied to web clippings and images
collaborate with other people on your notes
easily create notes on mobile
Use Snagit if you want to:
create high-quality web clippings and videos in universally usable file formats that are exportable
create web-clippings of hard to capture content like wide screen family trees, and information that appears further down a web page that you can’t see all on the screen at the same time
be able manipulate your content with annotations or drop it into project templates
easily export your captured content into a variety of other programs
not have to pay an ongoing subscription.
Another way of looking at it is that Evernote is more of a final destination for content you’re collecting, and Snagit is a content collector that makes it easy to use that content wherever you need it.
Conclusion
If you want to have one place to store and use a wide variety of notes including web clippings, Evernote is the best choice. If you want full flexibility in capturing and creating online content and using it in other programs and projects, Snagit is the best choice. I like to use them in combination. I keep my genealogy and other notes organized in Evernote, and then I use Snagit to capture web content exactly the way I want it and send it into Evernote as needed. And I use both programs for a whole lot more than just genealogy! I clip recipes, projects and ideas, and I use Snagit for all the images I create for Genealogy Gems.
