5 Genealogy Gems from 2024 that will boost your research – Podcast and Video

AUDIO PODCAST SHOW NOTES: In episode #290 of the Genealogy Gems podcast, Lisa Louise Cooke covers 5 of the top gems that came out of 2024. Use these to boost your family history now!

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5 Genealogy Gems from 2024

#1 MyHeritage LiveMemory™

Get all the basic details on LiveMemory on the show notes page for Genealogy Gems Podcast episode #289.

Since the launch MyHeritage has added a set of 10 custom animation options. Now you can choose the action and resulting emotion for more fun. You can choose from emotional gestures such as hugging. laughing, kissing, dancing, and singing. You can also go more playful with zero gravity, underwater, rain, balloons, and even add a T-Rex to the scene!

With the newest update your videos will now be stored in your MyHeritage account. This makes them easily available through the app gallery. Photos with a LiveMemory™ have a play icon on the bottom. Tap the photo, then tap “LiveMemory” to play your video. You can also download the video to your device.

It’s now easy to share your videos with friends and family directly from the app to Facebook, Instagram, TikTok, X, Bluesky, WhatsApp, and other social media. Tap the Share button at the bottom of the screen, then select the social media platform of your choice.

Tips from MyHeritage for Best Results:

  • Make sure you have the latest updated version of the MyHeritage mobile app installed.
  • MyHeritage recommends that you upload “an iconic family photo with interesting content. If you upload an ordinary selfie or a photo showing two people standing, there is no scene to speak of and the output video may look boring, unless you use one of the custom animations.
  • The results can vary depending on the resolution of the original photo and the angle of a person’s face. If you aren’t satisfied with the results, try uploading higher-resolution photos or photos with larger, more visible faces.”

Check out Lisa’s extended LiveMemory™ video on the Genealogy Gems Facebook page.

Extra: New Records:  Read Major Breakthrough: 3.4 Billion Records Extracted From Historical Newspapers Were Added to MyHeritage.

#2 Ancestry.com New Records

Ancestry added loads of new records in 2024. The best way to quickly find and review them is in the Card Catalog:
1. Go to https://www.ancestry.com/search/collections/catalog/
2. From the Sort by drop-down menu select Date Added
3. Records will be listed starting with the most recently added. They will be marked New.

#3 FamilySearch new records updates

FamilySearch also added millions of new records. Most were added to existing collections, expanding them even further. FamilySearch also used AI to generate indexes for many of their existing collections making them much more usable. This all means it’s worth revisiting collections where you came up empty in the past.
If you’re looking for free international records, FamilySearch is hard to beat! It includes,

#4 Library of Congress’ Chronicling America

Chronicling America is a huge collection of free digitized old newspapers from the United States. However, in the past it did not include all of the newspapers available through the Library of Congress website. Now all digitized newspapers have come under one search umbrella with the new Chronicling America website.

Chronicling America is in the process of transitioning from the legacy Chronicling America interface to a new Chronicling America interface and back-end search infrastructure. Read more about it.

Search the 4,000+ newspaper title with the Advanced Search at Chronicling America.

Explore all the titles using the interactive map.

chronicling america interactive map

Use the interactive map at Chronicling America to search for family history in old newspapers.

#5 AI Increased Use in Genealogy

Artificial Intelligence (AI) is here and will be with us in 2025 and many years to come. AI has been incorporated into genealogy websites for quite some time. However, in 2024 we saw a real uptick in genealogists using stand alone AI sites like ChatGPT, Gemini, and others to assist with their research.

If you’re going to start using these AI sites, keep a couple of key things in mind.

1) It’s not a person.
No matter how realistic it sounds, or how many times it refers to itself as “I”, it’s not a real person. This is important to remember as you’re interacting with it. When AI talks to you like it’s a person, and you work with it for a period of time, you can start to have the impression or the feeling that it knows what it’s talking about. It can come across as authoritative. You can get the impression that it understood what you asked for, and that’s just not the case. It’s a language tool, and it’s trying to put together what it thinks makes sense based on what it has already “learned”.

This means you must be in the driver’s seat and stay in the driver’s seat. Continually analyze what you’re getting from AI. Think about what it is “saying: Go check it out and verify the information and get more evidence to back it up.

2) It’s not a stand-alone search engine.
At this point AI isn’t ready to be used as a stand-alone search Q and A tool. However, it does have strengths we can use today for such activities as:
• Translating typed text,
• Summarizing large documents,
• Reassembling information into desired formats,
• Finding information buried within a document.
• Quickly determining if particular items appear in a document.

It can do much of the legwork, thereby speeding up the research and writing process.

If I had to predict, I would say we’re going to see AI and search merge more and more. In fact, over at Google’s Gemini, we’re noticing that it sometimes provides users with a check this at Google button. For now though, be aware that Google’s search results are not fully represented in Gemini’s responses. Go search it separately on Google, and then review the results provided. Make sure you can actually find sources for yourself that verify everything that AI tells you.

Learn more about AI and Genealogy with Genealogy Gems:

Resource

Download the show notes cheat sheet PDF

 

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Genealogy Gems Podcast Episode 254

How to Use Google Photos for Family History

Have you thought about using Google Photos but just weren’t sure how it worked or where to start? This episode will answer your questions and give you the confidence to use it effectively. In this audio introductory tour to Google Photos we will answer the questions:

  • What is Google Photos? Is Google Photos private?
  • What features do I get with Google Photos?
  • How does Google Photos storage work? (Is Google Photos free?)
  • How do I start using Google Photos?
  • How do I upload my photos and videos?
  • How to search and retrieve photos and videos in Google Photos How would Google Photos benefit genealogists, archivists and others?

This audio comes from my YouTube video series Elevenses with Lisa episode 23.

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MyHeritage

MyHeritage is the place to make connections with relatives overseas, particularly with those who may still live in your ancestral homeland. Visit www.MyHeritage.com

 

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Podcast Resources

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Show Notes: The audio in this episode comes from Elevenses with Lisa Episode 23. Visit the show notes page here.

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