Ethics, etiquette and all that stuff

I've had my head down during the past week preparing  a talk I am giving at The Society of Australian Genealogists on Thursday next week in Sydney.

It looks like it's going to be an intimate gathering as only 8 people have registered so far for the event. There is usually quite a healthy rollup when I give a presentation so I am quite surprised.

I was hoping that more people would be interested in this topic. Perhaps Sydney genies are all polite, kindly, thoughtful, law abiding folk who do not need some crazy lady telling them how to Do the Right Thing. Perhaps they are a bunch of researchers who are so busy hunting down ancestors that they do not think of the consequences of their actions. Maybe their geneabudgets are exhausted and they can't afford another event.

If you want to discuss how to deal with secrets that you encounter around Adoption, Crime, DNA Discoveries, Illegitimacy or Sex or if you need to make sure you are being a well-mannered and responsible genie this event may just be of assistance to you.

In everything we do in life it is important to reflect on and evaluate our actions. This talk will give you an opportunity to reflect on your practices in the geneaworld.

SAG members and guests can book for this session via this link:  https://www.sag.org.au/learn/current-events/full-list-of-events/icalrepeat.detail/2017/05/18/269/-/do-the-right-thing-etiquette-and-ethics-for-the-family-historian.html.

  

From now on they'll have to ask

Am I being Bah Humbug?

A while ago I found an unsourced tree that had quite a number of my ancestors listed online at a fellow genealogist's website. I immediately thought how mean-spirited or lazy this chap was for not sharing sources. It didn't bother me personally as I was using his site for clues from which I went off to seek sources.

I've been mulling over his practice for some time and think I may follow his lead. I like to share and collaborate with fellow genies, that's why I have my tree on the web in a public space. What I expect is that if anyone republishes what they find at the GeniAus Family site they will acknowledge their source.

I regularly see on Ancestry and now on MyHeritage  bits and pieces from the notes I share copied into online trees without acknowledgement. What makes me giggle is that I am a poor typiste and make quite a few keyboarding errors, these are replicated in those trees. Copy and Paste has a lot to answer for.

I stopped putting photos on my GeniAus Family site  when I saw so many of them subsequently appear on Ancestry, I have yet to see one sourced as coming from me. Could so many distant cousins really have copies of those photos in their collections? The photo with the most shares, an image of my Kealy ancestors' home in Ballyfoyle, was taken on my last trip to Ireland. As I have another trip to Ireland planned I'm going to try for a sharper image which I may just keep for myself.

The original photo of the Ballyfoyle home from which the shared one was cropped

The cropped and enhanced (by me)  photo I find all over the place

I am about to upload an update to my site that includes names, dates and places but no sources or notes. I know that some folk will still copy my stuff but if they want more information they will have to ask.

Am I being mean-spirited?

Meet the Dropout

When I embark on a project I usually stick with it but today you're looking at a Dropout. 

I expressed my disappointment with the University of Tasmania's Introduction to Family History Course last week when I compared it with a similar offering from the University of Strathclyde. 

I am enjoying the Strathclyde course but I was totally frustrated with the course from Tasmania for a number of reasons. It was interesting, at a family history group meeting, last week that when I discussed the course with two other students they shared my concerns. I had committed to continuing with the Tasmanian course but then yesterday I realised I had quite a few things on my plate and rather than battle on my purposes would be better served by working on other things and concentrating on the Strathclyde course.

This morning I withdrew from the course at The University of Tasmania. 

A contributing factor to my withdrawal was finding, on a list of recommended reading, one of Barry J Ewell's works. I'm concerned that due diligence may not have been observed in selecting this text for the course. Surely the bona fides of a recommended author must be investigated before placing a work on a reading list. I find it most disappointing that a tertiary institution that has a commitment to high standards of ethics would use a text from someone whose reputation is in doubt.

From Module 2 Conducting Your Research

In addition one of the video lectures in the course refers to The Five steps for conducting your research developed by Mr Ewell from his book "15 Lessons, Tips, and Tricks for Discovering Your Family History" published in 2012.

From Video Lecture: Module 2 Conducting Your Research

These steps, that the lecturer told us Mr Elwell (sic) developed, look very much like the Research Process on the Familysearch Wiki, https://familysearch.org/learn/wiki/en/Research_Process.

1. Identify what you know.
2. Decide what you want to learn.
3. Select records to search.
4. Obtain and search the records.
5. Evaluate and Use the information. 

Last week I raised the issue of Mr Ewell with the course co-ordinator who is investigating the matter.

Open letter to Commercial Genealogy Companies

My genimate, Kirsty Gray, has given me permission to share this letter she posted on her blog today.

I share her concern about the generous people who offer, via online groups, to do free lookups on genealogy subscription websites. I might add that those who can't afford subscriptions can make use of the free access provided at public libraries and family history societies.

Judy G Russell, in this video, eloquently explains why this sharing is illegal.

Open letter to Commercial Genealogy Companies

To whom it may concern:

I am writing today in the hope that you can take action over a very important issue. As a subscription-based service provider, your company has invested time and money digitising, transcribing and indexing records for the benefit of those of us who are keen (whether it be amateur or professional) family historians. We – a large proportion of the genealogical community – very much appreciate and value the work your companies are doing on our behalf to make more recordsavailable to us online (whilst continuing to enjoy the times when we have to ‘get our hands dirty’ with original documents and sources which are not available on our new-fangled gizmos). The rate at which you are adding resources is simply staggering and well worth the subscription fees we pay to access these records.

However, some people appear to have access of these records we pay for, without paying. How, you may ask? And you would be right to ask….! Do these characters have clever ways of hacking into your sites without paying? Are there flaws in your security systems? No and no.

These individuals are far from clever. They neither value nor respect the work that you are doing for the genealogical community and consider it their right to have free access to what they want. I wonder – would they expect to have a case heard in court, be represented by a solicitor and pay nothing? I am sure their plumbing and heating engineer would not turn up, fix their boiler and walk away without being paid. So, why is your service any different?

It isn’t. You have terms and conditions, fair usage policies, copyright restrictions and more, all available on your websites. Recently, two of The In-Depth Genealogist team interviewed Jill Ball, Judy G. Russell and I about exactly this topic. We expressed our concerns about Facebook groups offering look-ups from your websites and today, a vocal few tried to educate members of one Facebook group about the T&Cs they signed up to when they paid for their membership. It was clear that our comments were not welcomed by certain members of the group and a few individuals appear to think that they are ‘providing a service’ to the genealogical community by giving others free access. An interesting perspective when they are breaching the conditions of use…. When these individuals were politely directed to these conditions, they seemed to think that the appropriate course of action was not to read the conditions and consider their obligations, but to criticise the people who were trying to assist in the group, before removing their posts and then blocking the vocal members of the community.

The problem is, my dear Commercial Genealogy Company, that none of you jump up and down and do anything about these breaches. OK. I get it. You want all the genealogists to use your websites. You want us all to be your friends out here in genie-land. BUT, you are losing revenue because these individuals are providing copies of your records to others for free. If you banned a handful of people for ‘misuse of their subscription’ (or whatever you want to call it) and named and shamed them, more people would use your sites because they can no longer get what they want for nothing.

We – the respectful genealogical population – are trying to support you out here. I would urge you to get your moles out as well as listen to and act on the issues reported by the community. Join these Facebook groups and flush out the people/group who are breaking your rules. If you don’t, we will all suffer and the only winners in this game will be these who are getting their research done for nought.

Yours sincerely, A Seriously Concerned Genealogist.

My Last Act at Rootstech

Jen and Shannon from The In-Depth Genealogy team grabbed Judy G Russell, Kirsty Gray and me for a video interview to discuss some of the topics we had raised in our panel session "Dealing with Ethical Dilemmas in an Online World."  It was an honour to be included in the interview with Judy.

Although I didn't get to say much I did a lot of nodding. We needed 80 minutes for our chat not 8.

Great Teamwork

Thanks so much to my fellow panelists, Christine Woodcock, Kirsty Gray and Roger Moffat who joined me today at Rootstech to discuss Ëthical Dilemmas in an Online World. Although our audience was small exclusive it appeared to be a positive experience for those who joined us. One benefit of a small group is that one can actively involve audience members in the conversation.

A few attendees approached me afterwards to say that they had enjoyed the session, no-one went to sleep and no-one walked out. One person commented on Facebook "They had great hypothetical issues to discuss! Well done."

Thanks also to the many people from The British Commonwealth who came along to support our International Panel.

Following are some pictures of the event snapped by our official photographer, Sharn White. 

L-R Chriatine Woodcock, Roger Moffat, Kirsty Gray, Jill Ball

A Mansize Lectern

The Rootstech Photographer

Tricky Stuff

In just four weeks I will be taking to the stage at Rootstech with three of my genimates to discuss, in a panel session, some tricky topics in Dealing with Ethical Dilemmas in an Online World. 

Unfortunately one of our panelists, Pauleen, is no longer able to make the trip to Rootstech. I am delighted to announce that Canadian genealogist (and Scottish expert), Christine Woodcock, has agreed to join Kirsty Gray (England), Roger Moffat (proud Kiwi living in in the US) and me (flying the flag for Australia) to make up an international panel that represents five countries. Thank you so much Christine for agreeing to join us.

I do hope that some of our Genimates will join us in Room 151 of the Salt Palace (just across from the Exhibit Hall) at 4:40pm on Friday 2 February as we offer some suggestion for dealing with sticky situations.

Should you have some issues you would like us to discuss please contact one of the panelists and we will try to weave your dilemma into our chat.

Panel Sorted

Recently several people I respect have made negative comments on social media about panel sessions at genealogy conferences. I have taken these comments on board as I prepare for the session I am moderating at Rootstech 2016. 

I am thrilled to announce that I have gathered a panel representing four countries to join me on the podium. The bios for these three folk will appear shortly on the Rootstech website.

We have some ideas for discussion during the panel session but I am hoping that you might also be able to suggest scenarios for our panelists to ponder and discuss. You can read about our topic on the Rttostech website here: Dealing with Ethical Dilemmas in an Online World. Please take a look as I'd appreciate your ideas and input, you can place comments on this blog or email jillballau@gmail.com with your suggestions.

Going out on a limb

Out on a Limb

I am going out on a limb with this post as I know that many of my genimates have very strong opinions that conflict with my stance on this matter.

One aspect of sharing in the genealogical community that I found disappointing at the recent FGS/Rootstech conferences was the unwillingness of some presenters to allow attendees to take photos of their slides. After the Conferences I noted some conversations on social media that censured the large number of Rootstech attendees who captured images of presenters' slides on their smartphones or cameras. This practice seems to be accepted at Rootstech, I am one who has snapped slides at the four Rootstech Conferences I have attended.

I have presented at three Rootstech Conferences and am flattered when people find the slides I proffer worthy of capture, maybe I'm a strange bird! I just read a blog post from Australia's Gold Medallist Genealogy Rockstar, Shauna Hicks, who gave some presentations in Brisbane yesterday. On her post Shauna said " as usual my slides are on the Resources page of my website". Shauna is of those Generous Genies who is willing to share her outlines with the community, maybe she's a strange bird too!

I asked permission of several FGS presenters to snap their slides and permission was granted, thank you. Instead of having my head down typing furiously I was able to snap the slides and be released from tedious notetaking, I could listen intently and make eye contact with the presenters. Others said "no" so I respected that and busily typed the content from their slides into Evernote. In all cases I managed to copy the content of slides.

The issue we discuss should not be about the format in which we take notes it should be about the ethical use of the notes we capture. 

I understand that slides are the presenters' intellectual property and subject to copyright. Presenters are worried that their work will be copied and distributed to others and that others might even take their work and use it to develop their own presentions on the topic. I wonder how many people who took pictures of slides in Rootstech presentations are actually going to prepare and present the topic as their own in another forum! I suggest that if people are going to plagiarise others' work and present it as their own they will do it irrespective of the format in which they captured their notes.

What I think people fail to realise is that slides are/should be just an outline of a presentation, they may be an aide memoire to keep a speaker on track, a reinforcement of important concepts/points or a scaffold for the audience. Without hearing the full spoken content of  a presentation it would be quite difficult to reproduce a presentation from slides.

I can't understand why presenters who don't permit photographing of their slides don't ask attendees to refrain from taking notes during their presentations, these are just two ways of capturing an outline of a presentation and achieve the same purpose. Those who take hand or typewritten notes during a presentation can also distribute them to others and develop presentations based on the notes.

We should be discussing the issue of how we use the notes we take at the events we attend not the means we use to collect those notes.

I think we should look at the bigger picture, give permission for people to record notes in a format that is convenient for them and concentrate on educating our audiences in ethical use of conference notes, handouts etc.   

Mixing it up - Effective Presentations

I should have had it recorded or videoed!

Several months ago after Thomas MacEntee, Pauleen Cass and probably some others blogged  about Ethical Dilemmas facing genealogists I pitched the idea of having a panel session on that topic on the program for the 4th Unlock the Past Genealogy cruise. Alan Phillips liked the idea and added it to the program.

My role was quite simple really, I had to think up a few questions/problems, invite some panelists to join the panel, put together a bit of a powerpoint and moderate the session. The panelists I invited were Mixing it up - Effective from my social media contacts that I knew would be on the cruise; from the work they do in the genealogy world I knew that they were top-notch solid performers. I was thrilled that Pauleen Cass, Kirsty Gray and Maria Northcote agreed to join me as panelists.

Kirsty, Pauleen, Jill, Maria

I am just kicking myself that I didn't record the session as I would love the opportunity to sit quietly, listen and mull over the contributions made by the panelists. As I was busy watching the clock and being nervous I wasn't able to concentrate on the session content  as fully as I would have liked. A recording of the session would have been a useful resource for sharing with the wider genealogical community.

After the session I received many compliments,  this was due to the quality of the panelists and the format of the presentation which allowed panelists to bounce ideas off each other. I encouraged some audience interaction during the session and that gave more people opportunities to add to the conversation.

I believe that at such events we need more interactive sessions and more opportunities for group participation than that offered by the lecture or "chalk and talk" format. Someone said to me in an email I received after the panel session " I particularly enjoy conference sessions when there is a bit of interaction so the more sessions like the panel type session, the better."

I realise that "the sage on the stage" approach is necessary when an expert has new knowledge or information to impart but it would be refreshing if conference or event organisers could mix up the type of sessions on offer. Our individual learning styles need to be accommodated.

By adding in more panel sessions, Q&A sessions with an expert and moderator, hands-on workshops (BYOD), poster sessions, sharing circles, jigsaw groups and team games eg Genealogy Trivia a program can be made more interesting. The Bingo method that was used so effectively by Maria Northcote in her podcasts session on the cruise kept the audience engaged and on their toes throughout the talk (and it was fun).

So how about it organisers of genealogy events? 
When you are programming your next event try to add a little bit of variety.

Ethically challenged?

I have just emailed a copy of the issues we will be discussing in the "Dealing with Ethical Dilemmas in Genealogy" panel on the 4th Unlock the Past Cruise to the panelists for the session.

Joining me as panelists will be three eminent genealogists from Australia and the UK:

Pauleen Cass
Kirsty Gray
Maria Northcote

This session promises to be a cracker as there are some curly questions for the three panelists to ponder. Most genealogists will have been confronted with one or more of the dilemmas to be discussed. 

If you are cruising I suggest that you highlight this session for attendance. I am a fan of panel sessions because they give the audience an opportunity to hear a range of opinions on a subject rather than a one-sided view. I must remember to get the panelists permission to record it.

Panelists in a session on the 3rd UTP Cruise

The issues we will be discussing are so interesting that I will schedule them for discussion in a future GeniAus Hangout on Air.

Opening a can of worms or two?

I had a loooong chat with Alan Phillips from Unlock the Past this week, I was thrilled to hear that 230 people (genies and a few partners) have booked for the 4th Genealogy Cruise out of Australia in February - what a genealogy feast it will be. If you have been thinking about joining this cruise you had better do it now as there are very few cabins left.

I am excited that I will be presenting/moderating a new session on the voyage around the topic of ethics in genealogy. I am working on a set of questions/scenarios that I will open to discussion by a panel of experienced genealogists on the cruise. We will cover issues such as publishing sensitive information and how to decide what to include, the right of descendants to know the truth, borrowing other peoples photos and plagiarism and copyright.

Louis Kessler, Shauna Hicks, Alona Tester and Helen Smith in the Social Media Panel  I moderated on the 3rd UTP Cruise

I forgot about plagiarism!

Like Audrey Collins I too was taken with the badge Thomas MacEntee gave me at the Rootstech Conference earlier this year. (You can buy one here). That little red badge simply says "Keep Calm and Cite your Sources".

I don't mind what method one uses to cites one's sources but it should be done whenever one quotes another's words in any form of media. With the 140 character limit on Twitter this may be difficult but, as I used to say to my students, "plagiarism is stealing."  Taking the words of another and passing them off as your own is unethical and should not be done even on Twitter.

When I wrote my post, "I'm into recycling" yesterday about Twitter etiquette I did not mention plagiarism. This morning I saw a thoughtful sentence posted on Twitter that did not sound like the language normally used by that tweeter. I put the sentence into Google and within a few seconds found that sentence on a genealogy blog post written yesterday. The tweeter in question was obviously also captivted by the sentence and shared it without attribution. It has been retweeted a couple of times with kudos going to the tweeter not the blogger who appears to be the original creator of this piece of text. I am now wondering about the credibility of the tweeter and the organisation this person represents.


I will now go into yesterday's post and add a piece about plagiarism.

Plagiarism does not belong on Twitter - "Keep Calm and Cite your Sources".