BillionGraves.com, along with their geo-tagging smartphone app, is a promising start up.
FindAGrave.com is a mature giant.
Interment.net is a valiant pioneer.
US GenWeb Archives Tombstone Project shows the strength of a passionate community.
US GenWeb Archives Tombstone Project shows the strength of a passionate community.
The project varies greatly from one state to the next and from one county to the next because each such jurisdiction is designed to be run by a different volunteer. Photographs are generally submitted to the volunteer in charge of that jurisdiction who uploads and transcribes them. This puts an undue burden on each area's volunteer. When smaller amounts of photographs were coming in this burden felt manageable. Since the Tombstone Project began in 1997, the number of people submitting tombstone photos to the internet has increased sharply. Submitting them to someone else to do the transcription and uploading is especially desirable if you happen to have photographed an entire cemetery. In 2009, I photographed ten cemeteries for the US GenWeb Archive. After the county volunteer processed those first ten cemeteries, and I realized the burden it placed on her, I looked elsewhere for my future cemetery photography efforts.
Interment.net is a valiant pioneer.
Also begun in 1997, Interment.net appears to be the first website run by a small group of individuals--2 people in this case--accepting tombstone data for open publishing online. Though the website claims initial popularity and is still available to this day, one major drawback of Interment.net is its failure to host headstone photographs. Nevertheless, because it is a separately generated and maintained database it may still be worth checking. While it was an important pioneer in its day, I choose not to invest my volunteer efforts into this database.
FindAGrave.com is a mature giant.
Since 2000, when today's Find A Grave website went online, the site has become home to over 65 million individual grave records. FindAGrave.com has many perks which helped lead to its position as the most well known online headstone host. Find A Grave's most notable unique feature is the ability to request a photograph of a specific grave marker. Since 2005 I have been a member of Find A Grave, but it was not until this year (2011) that I took it as a serious volunteer opportunity. In a matter of a few months I uploaded over 500 photos and added more than 300 individual records. I made sure there were records for all my direct ancestors whose place of burial I could determine, and I added many of the records from the ten cemeteries I photographed for US GenWeb Archive. On Find A Grave you can add records without photographs, you can add as many records or photographs as your heart desires without waiting for someone else to upload your work. You can link individuals in family relationships, organize individuals into files called "virtual cemeteries," request edits on records managed by other individuals, etc. You are in control.
BillionGraves.com, along with their geo-tagging smartphone app, is a promising start up.
There are two major things, in my estimation, that set BillionGraves apart from Find A Grave.
I have worked in FindAGrave and Billion Graves and have a "worker bees" perspective. My first cemetery in FindAGrave was local to my home where with my digital camera I systematically photographed each section, noting Family Stones and surrounding foot stones then spent the winter transcribing each photo to create a memorial. It became a true labor of love as families were found and available for their family to touch their ancesters last resting place. My goal was to photograph each stone as if they were my family. Contrasting Billion Graves where others photograph and I transcribed what they digitally recorded. The problem with that process is that photographs were done for speed and not always able to read. It it was required of the photographer to review their work before submitting it would eliminate blurry, unreadable photographs and overgrown stones unable to read. Of the two, I like FindAGrave the best. They are sensitive memorials created housing cherished links to the past as well as photos.
ReplyDeleteAs a user who has never photographed, but is definitely thinking about it, I wonder whether Find A Grave is worth the effort. Graves with photographed headstones are mixed with graves without photographs and contaminated with "graves" that may not even exist, with questionable dates uploaded because a descendant thinks that's where the ancestor ought to be buried. Without a headstone picture, or at least an extract from cemetery records, you never know whether you can trust Find A Grave. If there were a box to check, saying Headstone Located, at least you'd know there was one.
ReplyDeleteI was a contributor on FindaGrave for 10 years. My biggest complaint is that they don't have anything in their website to let you know that there's already a memorial posted. It would save a lot of time and effort. There's lots of duplicates and even more. They stole my memorials and they won't transfer them to my brother, who's been posting memorials for 17 years. Very unprofessional in my opinion. There's also some 'greedy' ones posting that grab all the memorials. Others are quite obnoxious and rude.
ReplyDeleteNote sure my previous comment made it... New one with updates.
ReplyDeleteI a relative beginner (ha ha) but where I can hardly find anything with BillionGraves and their search is painful, I can frequently find matches in FindAGrave and it has a great search.
I have requested a number of photos from FindAGrave and got some the same day, others still waiting. I like its a community thing and that can make some data iffy, but the more people using it the better this will be. I have been able to update the information for my relatives and upload images, I have put them in a virtual cemetery (a great feature).
I am thinking of volunteering and can imagine that it is hard to work out which have already been covered as most people don't seem to geo-tag their submissions. The app should be able to show you or search a list of graves "near you". In any case, I'll start by handling requested photos, so you know there is not already one...
There policy is to release memorials to relatives, if that doesn't happen, I'd escalate the issue, I got some transferred to me within a few days. There are a-holes everywhere so its unsurprising that some issues with any of these exist.