Ever wondered if you have royalty in your family? Or if you’re somehow related to your coworker? Now there’s a lab for that!
At the Family History Technology Lab Open House on September 18, visitors explored new tools for discovering their genealogies, including a beta version of Relative Finder, which shows users their relation to famous people (including royalty!), prophets, and their friends.
Other new technologies include Virtual Pedigree, which allows users to explore their complete pedigrees in one smooth and easy-to-read document, and Intelligent Indexing, which helps indexers by filling in identical fields, recognizing handwriting, and identifying keywords.
“We figured if anyone was going to be spearheading family history research, it ought to be the computer science department at BYU,” said CPMS Associate Dean Dr. Tom Sederberg, who oversees the lab with Dr. Bill Barrett of the Department of Computer Science.
Sederberg created the first version of Relative Finder eighteen years ago when he was called as a family history consultant in his ward. Since then, his idea has grown into a research lab dedicated to making genealogy work more easily accessible to the general public.
The mission of the lab is to develop tools that will make doing family history work easier and more enjoyable. The students who work in the lab help develop new tools and improve current ones to provide a better experience for users.
“I think these new technologies are awesome because they help people get excited and interested in family history more,” said Mindy Jacox, a sophomore and computer science minor who works in the lab. “I love family history and I’m very interested in how technology plays a role in getting more people involved.”
The students are currently working to develop a set of children’s games to go along with Family Search. While still in the early stages, the lab hopes they will eventually help families enjoy doing genealogy together.
“We intended them to be a way to get children interested in family history and exposed to the spirit of Elijah,” Sederberg said.