"GenGophers.com"

Our older son, Dallan, has launched another free website for family history.  The URL is
GenGophers.com .  We helped him and Solveig put up and take down his booth in the exhibit hall at RootsTech last month and enjoyed watching visitors find new information in only a few minutes about ancestors they have been researching for many years.  They were searching 40,000 digitized family history books using Dallan's proprietary search engine.

His new website has been favorably reviewed by at least three other bloggers.

Dick Eastman

Randy Seaver

Diane Haddad

In Diane's blog, if you scroll down, you will also be able to see pictures (with a description) of the pilot Family Discovery Center that was unveiled in the Joseph Smith Memorial Building.

Stake Stories Project

Facebook Page
We are going to start a sharing personal stories project using one of the 60 partners of Family Search, namely Legacy Stories. This project will involve taking a picture of members of the Stake and attaching their recorded three-minute story about themselves. These "Pict-Orals" will only be accessible by other members of the Stake (not anyone on the internet).
Please use this link
http://www.legacystories.org/?wiz_id=3257 
to create your free Legacy Stories account.
Then, come to the Family History Center during our Stake Family History Discovery Week (March 2nd thru 7th) to record your story.
Bring your picture if you have one, or we'll take your picture then.
Call 651-635-9254 if you have any questions.

Stake Family History Discovery Week

The St. Paul Stake is going to host a Stake Family History Discovery Week from Monday (3/2/15) morning (11:00 am) through Saturday (3/7/15) afternoon (3:00 pm).  There will be seven family history discovery experiences and you could attend one or all of them.

This is a link to our Stake Family History Center FaceBook  page, where you can tell us which of the seven events you are planning to attend during our Stake Family History Discovery Week.

You will be able to receive help in creating a FamilySearch account, or uploading a photo, or creating a story, or finding an ancestor to add to your tree, or printing a Family Ordinance Request to take to the Temple.

The Thursday evening workshop is intended to focus on creating a FOR to take to the St. Paul Temple.

The Saturday afternoon class will be taught by Julia Mosman, wherein she will teach us how to use Evernote in doing our family history more efficiently.

Family History Center Redesigned

This is a link to a "Genealogy Gems" blog about the new design for the Family Discovery Center display in the Joseph Smith Memorial Building on Temple Square in Salt Lake City. 

Family History Center Redesigned

Some elements of this new design for attracting people to family history were also part of one of the Family Search booths in the exhibit hall associated with the RootsTech 2015 conference.  In the Joseph Smith Memorial building, there was one all-in-one monitor (smaller than the huge touch screens that make up the display), which could be placed in our Family History Center in the St. Paul Stake Center building.  In the booth in the conference exhibit hall, about twenty of these all-in-one monitors were the main attraction and people were often waiting 2 or3 deep to be able to use these new touch screen monitors.

However, we could also install a version of this software on our computers to give our Family History Center patrons an opportunity to have that type of family history discovery experience. The software that I'm referring to could even be installed on your home computer, namely RootsMapper and RelativeFinder.