Utah Genealogical Society: Information Technologies’ Evolution
Bibliographic record
Abstract
The research purpose was to study the evolution of information technologies of the Genealogical Society of Utah (GSU; now – FamilySearch International) and familiarize the Ukrainian reader with them. The research methodology took into consideration information technologies development in historical retrospect. The scientifi c novelty was based on the analysis of publications about GSU in Ukraine and abroad. Conclusions. GSU is one of the world leaders in genealogical research. Yet the results of this research create an image of GSU as a world-class scientifi c and research company for software and information technologies development. Throughout its history, GSU has mastered the path from paper, through microfi lm and to digital fi le, from DOS to Windows, from disks to the Internet, from website «lockups» to responding instantly, and from outsourcing to in-house digital storage and tape libraries. GSU cooperates with the most prominent corporations in the sphere of information storage and management. For more than half a century, independently and in cooperation, the GSU has developed, tested and put into operation many variants of computer programs and technologies, including the universally accepted specifi cation for the exchange of genealogical data between computer programs of diff erent manufacturers – GEDCOM. GSU focused on processing and organizing vast arrays of genealogical information, indexing, searching, providing diff erentiated access for users via the Internet, and fi nally, guaranteed storage and backup. In these areas GSU creatively applied state-of-the-art technologies. References: 1. Allen, B. Ja., Embry, L. Je. & Mehr, K. B. (1995). Hearts Turned to the Fathers: A History of the Genealogical Society of Utah, 1894–1994. Brigham Young University Studies. 392 p. [in English].2. Barrett, A. W., Hutchison F. D. L., Kennard J. D., Nielson E. H. & Quass D. (2004). Digital Mountain: From Granite Archive to Global Access Introduction to Family History. IEEE Proceedings, International Workshop on Document Image Analysis for Libraries (DIAL 24). Palo Alto, CA. (pр. 14–121). [in English].3. Bennett, F. A. (1953). The Record Copying Program of the Utah Genealogical Society. The American Archivist, 16(3), 227–232). [in English]. https://doi.org/10.17723/aarc.16.3.d80hv277028178664. Bybee, C. H. (2008). Online Genealogical Research Resources. Brigham Young University Studies, 47(1), 153–164). [in English].5. Greighton, T. (2017). LOC Designing Storage Architectures. Retrieved from https://digitalpreservation.gov/meetings/DSA2017/Day_1/25_GD_Tom_Creighton_LDS.pdf [in English].6. Little, H. (Winter 2008). Microfilm, Mormons and the Technology of the Archive. eSharp Journal, University of Glasgow, 12. Retrieved from https://www.gla.ac.uk/media/Media_102866_smxx.pdf [in English].7. Lofthouse, S. M. (May 1971). A History of the Genealogical Society of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-Day Saints to 1970. A Thesis presented to the Department of Church History and Doctrine Brigham Young University. In Partial Fulfillment of the Requirement for the Degree Master of Arts. [in English]. 8. Mehr, K. B. (2014). Dawning of the Digital Age in the Family History Department, 1995–2011. 146 p. [in English].9. Papakin, H. (2008). Arkhivy Ukrainy v mizhnarodnykh ta mizhrehionalnykh prohramakh zberezhennia kulturnoi spadshchyny: dosvid ta perspektyvy [Archives of Ukraine in international and interregional cultural heritage preservation programs: experience and prospects]. Arkhivy Ukrainy, 1–2, 150–157. [in Ukrainian].10. Powell, F. T. (1976). Saving the Past for the Future – Tales of International Search and Cooperation. The American Archivist, 39(3), 311–318. [in English]. https://doi.org/10.17723/aarc.39.3.g0748k223762q3w511. Sherwinter N. & Wright T. G. (2012). Advancing Data Integrity in a Digital Preservation Archive Ex Libris and the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints. iPRES2012. Proceeding of the 9th Internationbal Conference on Preservation of Digital Objects. University of Toronto, Faculty of Information. (pp. 150–154). [in English].12. Wright, T. G. (2012). Using Rosetta, StorageGRID, and New IBM Tape Solutions to Implement State-of-the-Art Digital Preservation. Retrieved from http://documents.el-una.org/923/2/ELUNA_Digital_Preservation_at_the_Church_Final_2012_3_7.pdf [in English].
Fetched live from OpenAlex and de-inverted. Abstracts are not stored in this database: the inverted indexes are 8.6 GB of the frame’s 9.3 GB of text, and the host has 13 GB free.
How this classification was reachedexpand
Full frame machine prediction
Teacher imitationNot calibrated prevalence, not ground truth. Human validation pending. The Gemma side is a direct model label for every work in the frame, read from the title-only record. The Codex side is a classifier learned from the 10,348 direct Codex labels and calibrated to design-weighted sample rates; fields without enough sample support carry no Codex call. Candidate is the union of the two sides; consensus is their intersection. These outputs are machine_predicted_unvalidated and are not human labels.
Distilled classifier scores by category (both heads)
| Category | Codex | Gemma |
|---|---|---|
| Metaresearch | 0.003 | 0.009 |
| Meta-epidemiology (narrow) | 0.000 | 0.000 |
| Meta-epidemiology (broad) | 0.000 | 0.000 |
| Bibliometrics | 0.005 | 0.007 |
| Science and technology studies | 0.004 | 0.009 |
| Scholarly communication | 0.007 | 0.007 |
| Open science | 0.001 | 0.004 |
| Research integrity | 0.001 | 0.002 |
| Insufficient payload (model declined to judge) | 0.008 | 0.001 |
Machine scores (provisional)
The two teacher heads of the student model, read on this work. A score orders the frame for review; it never asserts a category, and the validation status ships verbatim with every row.
Baseline scores from an immature model (maturity gate not passed, 7 training rounds). Scores rank; they never assert a category.
score_only:v0-immature-baseline · verbatim from the scoring run: score_only means the number may rank works, and no category label ships from itClassification
machine, unvalidatedMachine predicted; a candidate call from one source (direct Gemma or distilled Codex), not a consensus.
How this classification was reached, model by model and score by score, is at the end of the page under "How this classification was reached".