OCR generation of obits and using FamilySearch

Best done before the meeting

If you wish to follow along at the meeting while we try out using OCR to transcribe obituaries via Google Drive and learning how to add and edit people in the tree at FamilySearch.org, it is best to first make sure you have the accounts set up before our meeting that will be used at these two tasks.

• To use Google Drive to convert an image of an obituary or some other document (in jpeg or any other formats), you will need to have an account with Google. If you already have one, you are set. If you don't, the easiest way is to create an email account with Google's Gmail system. You do NOT have to use this email account (though it is easy to use and gives a generous amount of space), the mere creation of the account is all that is needed. Google has instructions to create a Gmail account at https://support.google.com/mail/answer/56256?hl=en. Follow the steps there. Come to the meeting with your email address and your password so that you can log in and follow along as we learn how to use OCR to convert document images.
• If you wish to learn how to add and edit people at FamilySearch.org, use their registration page at https://familysearch.org/register/1.

Finding an obituary on http://pella.advantage-preservation.com

Let's suppose that we know that in the July 14, 1989 issue of the Pella Chronicle on page 10 there is an obituary that we wish to transcribe. Here are the steps.

• In your browser, go http://pella.advantage-preservation.com
• At the bottom of the screen is "Browse By Year". Click on "More".
• Click on 1989.
• In "Browse By Month", click on "July"
• Scroll through pages and dates of issues on the right until the correct date and page is found. (Or choose "Browse By Day" and click on 14 and then scroll to page 10.)
• Click on the word "Chronicle" for the page that you want, which will open up that page.
• Find the obituary of interest.
• Click on the scissor icon in order to crop the particular obituary (e.g., Carolyn Bokhoven).
• Drag the presented outline of the area to crop on top of the obituary and then drag corners to specify the region of interest.
• Click on the disk icon in order to prepare to save it. (Note that using Safari with Macintosh, the disk icon may not appear but click on the left half of the portion that sticks out of the surrounding rectangle.) This will bring up a preview window.
• In the upper-right, there is an arrow pointing down to a disk. Click on that.
• This will save it to your hard drive. If using a Macintosh, it should save it to your Downloads folder. If using Windows, you can (left-)click on the arrow in the lower-left of the screen on the name of the file just downloaded and ask to see the folder location (which also may be the Downloads folder depending on what version of windows. Note the exact location of the file for later use.

Using OCR to transcribe obituaries

• Find or create a graphic image of an obituary (other document of interest). We will assume that you have just saved the obituary from the previous section.
• Open a browser and enter the URL drive.google.com and click on Go to Google Drive (if needed).
• Login with your Gmail account email, then click Next, and then enter your Gmail password.
• This is your Google Drive space where you can store up to about 15 GB of data.
• We want to upload our image of the obituary. There are two ways to do this.
  • Click on New and select File Upload. Navigate to the folder where you stored your folder and select it and click Open.
  • OR, open up the window of the folder holding your image (perhaps Downloads folder) and with the browser window also visible where you have Google Drive, drag the file into the browser window and release.
• Click on the file image of the obituary so that it is selected.
• Right click on this image and select Open With / Google Docs.
• Doing so will open a new tab in your browser and present you with the original graphic image of the obituary in this new Google Docs document, but below the graphic image you will find the transcription of the image using OCR (Optical Character Recognition). Note that there will likely be some mistakes in recognizing some of the letters. The poorer the quality of the original image, the more errors there will be.
• You can now select the text, paste it into a word processing application, correct the mistakes and use it. HOWEVER, make sure that you also record at the bottom of the text of the obituary the name of the newspaper, location of being published, date published, and page on which it resided. (You may also wish to denote the column if it is a small article on a busy page.)

Using FamilySearch to Add and Edit people in the tree at FamilySearch.org

• First, in your browser, enter in https://www.familysearch.org.
• Click on the Sign In button (assuming that you have an account already - otherwise choose the Free Account button)
• Click on the Family Tree menu and choose Find.
• Enter in the first and last name of the person whom you wish to enter. Also enter in as much other information that you know about so that you can limit the search (in case someone else has already entered in your person), including gender, birth year and death year. If it is a common name and the person had a spouse, you may find it helpful to add that name as well.
• You will be presented with a list of "strong matches" and a set of weaker matches. Review these, including the birth, death, and names of parents and spouse(s).
• If you think that there is a match, click on the name and then click on "Person" to learn more details about the person to see if this really is a match. If it is a match, you can review the information and add any additional information or substantiation for why you know the data is correct.
• If there is no match, you have two choices:
  • Click on the Person menu and choose "Add Unconnected Person" (but I don't recommend this approach)
  • Search for another person connected to this person but perhaps closer to the tree that you already have. If you find this person (such as child or spouse), then you add this person on the page for the child or spouse. In other words, it is better to add a person already connected to someone that you know rather than someone not being connected.
• Now we assume that we are going to add someone to a person that already exists in the tree, either a parent, spouse, child or sibling. For the sake of illustration, we will add a parent of someone already in the tree.
• To do so, first Find this person by using the process above or by finding the person within your own tree (using the Tree menu) and go to the Person page for this person.
• Click on the "Add Parent" button. This will bring up the Find window similar what was done above. Again add as much known information as you have and search. If you do not find the parent in the list presented, you can then use the Add button at the top to add in the person who is the parent. Make sure you add in the details that distinguish this person from others with similar names. Also, add in records (see Search records on right of window for the person) to support the data that you just added about the person.