Continuing the review of changes to the LDS Church site Family Search (https://familysearch.org), if you have not used the site recently, it will appear completely different to you.

The link homepage is a colorful, if “busy,” page with a variety of options. My advice is that if you are not already registered, click “Sign In” and then “Create Account.” Follow the directions to register for free and then return to the homepage and sign in.

You’ll now see several choices, briefly explained below.

• Clicking “volunteer” at the top of the page allows you to volunteer in the LDS indexing project, helping to transcribe information from original records into online indices that allow others to search records by name; make monetary donations; or volunteer to evaluate features of the LDS site.
• “Get Help” lets you contact the site in various ways.
• In the second line, the “Family Tree” link leads you to a page that allows you to start with yourself and then add family members to build a family tree (which I will hereafter call the FamilySearch family tree).
• Unless you have genealogy experience, I would advise against using this feature as a beginner. Your information will go into a database that is available to all users of this feature of the site, the majority of which are LDS Church members who use the information in developing their trees for church ordinances dealing with the LDS religion.
• The “Photos” link is not yet operative, but it will allow insertion of photos to your FamilySearch family tree. Again, I don’t advise this until you are more experienced.

The site gives several advisories about the “ownership” of material you may enter in your tree. I advise you to read and fully understand the consequences of uploading information to the FamilySearch family tree, so that you can make an informed decision as to whether you want to do so.

I must strongly point out that registering on and using FamilySearch in no way obligates anyone to submit his/her family information or photos to the site.

Regardless of the FamilySearch family tree feature, FamilySearch provides invaluable resources and information, for free, for researchers of genealogy and family history. Nothing I have said should discourage you from using this very valuable site in your research.

The third link on the second line is “Search,” the link I use the most and will further discuss in coming issues.

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