Software Changes

This month has seen some only a few changes to the software. Perhaps the most important are: -

Unlimited Searching

A large-scale site such as NZGDB has to impose a limit on the number of records that can be returned at once. There are over 5M records in the main GDB table, so some searches can return several thousand records! When we purchased our own server I was able to increase the limit from the original 100 to 1000, but even this limit could still be frustrating, as searches for common names like “OLD” and “BARNES” could not give you a list of all the records. Instead the program merely showed you the first 1000 with a message “More than 1000 records returned. Make your search more specific”.

This frustration has been removed. Now, if you attempt a large search, the message says “More than 1000 records returned. Make your search more specific or click [Next] for more” and a [Next] button appears: -

Clicking the [Next] button returns the next 1000 records (or up to 1000 records), and also replaces the search panel with paging controls: -

You can now move up and down the list with the [<Prev] and [Next>] buttons, or show up to 1000 records starting at any position by entering the number and clicking [Show from]. Only the 1000 records displayed are sent to your computer, keeping network traffic to a minimum. When you have finished, click [Restore Search] to go back to the normal search controls and do another search.

Change to Saved Searches

The same feature has been added to Saved Searches. You may remember from Newsletter #9 that “advanced” searching was implemented, so that when you click [Advanced Search] you have some extra search options including the ability to name and save a search. However at the time saved searches were subject to the same, 1000 record, limit as a normal search. Saved searches now save all the records found by a search, not just the first 1000, and you can retrieve a saved search and navigate through it with [<Prev] and [Next>] in the same way as for a normal search. In fact, paging through a normal search uses a saved search with the special name of “$$Paging”.

Pictures in Tree View.

For a long time you have been able to set one of the pictures stored in the scrapbook to automatically display as a thumbnail when you viewed the page. For example, opening my favourite demonstration record of Hannah OLD you see the picture of her with her pet magpie, the second picture from the scrapbook, displayed at the top of the page: -

These thumbnails are now also displayed in the tree view if they are present. For example: -

As with the thumbnail on the individual’s page, the image can be clicked to display it at its full size.

Easier Document Downloading

It is now easy to download your scrapbook documents: simply select the document in the Update/Scrapbook page and click [Download] and the document will be emailed to you. In other words,

open the individual page,
click [Update],
click [Scrapbook],
click Select for the particular scrapbook item,
click [Download].

Of course you can only do this if you have update rights for the record, otherwise the [Update] button doesn’t appear,. This facility therefore does NOT allow you to download somebody else’s scrapbook items: you’ll have to ask them to send the item to you, or to give you update rights on their record, if you want your own copy. But why would you want your own copy? Better to simply link to theirs.

The intention of this facility is to make it easy for you to store your scrapbook entries in NZGDB, then download, update, and re-upload them if you want to make changes. While I imagine that it is unlikely that you will edit photos, it is easy to envisage a situation where you have created a biography and want to add some more detail to it. We want to make this as easy as possible. Genealogy is always a work in progress, and so you should be able to add items of information as you come across them, every day if necessary. Publication should not be a major effort, unless you are writing a book.

We have created a new document category, “Biography”, to cover single-person stories, in addition to the previous “Narrative Family History” which would deal with a whole line of ancestry or descent. Narrative family histories are difficult documents to deal with in a web site: they are often large which makes for slow uploading and downloading, and while each individual document can be searched it can be difficult to find information if you don’t know which document to look in. This may be the reason why the 70+ narrative family histories that have been in NZGDB for over a year have rarely, if ever, been accessed. However biographies, such as the one attached to PYM, Freda Mary(1896-1990), are easily found as a by-product of the normal GDB search, and being relatively small will load quickly even for those with a dial-up connection.

Design Question

Would it be of interest to be able to find a list of biographies? Or to be able to know which of the records found in a search had biographies or other scrapbook information?

Some options: -

1. Provide a separate “Search Biographies” page.

2. Provide options within the general search (page GDB1) that allow you to specify: “Must have picture(s)”, “Must have Biography” etc.

3. Simply put the scrapbook count as an information field in the returned search results. Thus you would see “6” against my record of Hannah OLD. Until you opened the record you would not see whether these were pictures, biographies, or something else. However this would help to steer you towards records with rich information, and a combination of notes and pictures might actually be better information than a biography composed with as a Word or PDF document.

4. Do nothing: there is already an option in the Documents section to search documents by person, so you only have to enter the name that you are looking for and select the document class of “Biography” to see a list of biographies of that person. All the functionality of option 1 is already provided, except that it is spread over three searches (documents by person, useful web sites, publications)

Currently I’m inclined towards option 1. My reasoning: there are several kinds of biography: -

1 Documents stored within NZGDB

i. Attached to individual GDB records

ii. As free-standing documents with category “Biography”

2 Publications listed in the resource table “Publications”. These publications are primarily indexed by title, not person, for example the autobiography of Sir Edmund Hillary would be indexed as “Nothing Venture, Nothing Win”, not as HILLARY, Edmund. Of course the only information that we would have in NZGDB would be a reference to this book, you would not be able to read it on line.

3 Links to other biographies. For example, we might have a table of biographies in sources such as the Dictionary of NZ Biography, or other web sites, but not actually have a copy of the biography within the NZGDB site. Arguably, why should we? After all, it would just be another copy, better to link to the master copy.

So, we could provide a biography search, and the results could return all three types of biographies with the click response behaving differently depending on the type. Categories one and three would open the biography; in category three this would take you to another web site. For category two you’d merely get a reference to the book, and you’d have to go to the library or a bookshop to actually get a copy to read.

What do you think? Perhaps we need to provide all three options.

GDB now over 5M records!

Another milestone: NZGDB has edged over 5M records, currently (20^th May) having 5,007,707 records in the main GDB table. This is about ten times the number at this time last year, an excellent result for our first year since launch. This is a number that is actually larger than the current population of New Zealand, it represents by far the largest collection of New Zealand family trees, and is an excellent start towards our goals of having at least one record of every ancestor of every New Zealander, and for those records to contain the best information available (directly or by links) about that person. But we’ve still got a long way to go.

Now it’s up to you. We are reaching the end of the stock public GED files that are easily available, and users submitting their own data will largely drive further growth. So upload your data: first your database as a GED, and then your scrapbook information. Remember: it is free to put your data on to NZGDB (in fact, we pay you, by giving you a subscription credit), and we will never charge you for seeing your own data! But we really do appreciate your subscriptions and donations, which help us to keep this site growing. In fact, we’ve just spent much of the money received so far on new software that will hopefully start to show its worth in facilities that I couldn’t previously provide. I want to NZGDB to provide more and of the features that you expect from your PC programs, but delivered over the web, and combined with the advantages of a shared database, instant publication, and easy communication. However, first I have to learn how to use the new software properly.

Now: discount available for advance subscriptions

At $25, a year’s subscription to NZGDB is already cheap, no more than the cost of a bottle of good wine. But now you can subscribe to NZGBD for even less: $100 gets you ten year’s subscription. In the payment page, just select 10 as the number of years, and the subscription will be calculated as $100: that’s only $10 per year!

Regards,

Robert Barnes,

NZGDB Developer