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Shaking Your Family Tree

March 04, 1999
	Digital Imaging Captures U.S. Census Schedules by Myra Vanderpool Gormley, C.G.
Heritage Quest, using digital microfilm, has imaged all of the 1790, 1900 and 1920 federal census schedules. The remaining population schedules, popularly referred to by genealogists as simply "census records,'' will be completed by October, according to Brad Steuart, the company's president and CEO. This new product, called Family Quest Archives (tm) Digital Microfilm, is on CD-ROM. The CDs are being released one census year at a time on a roll-by-roll basis (one roll of microfilm per CD-ROM) with all the familiar National Archives microfilm numbers genealogists are accustomed to using. The 1790 federal census records are comprised of 12 rolls of microfilm and these particular Heritage Quest Archives CDs are on 12 CDs. In general, each of the census CDs will contain four to 10 counties. Heritage Quest used the National Archives silver master census films, but has digitized and enhanced every image. Each image was scanned at 200 DPI, providing excellent document clarity and printing capability. Each CD includes reader software and runs on a 486 or faster processor operating Windows 95, 98 or NT. System requirements are: 16 MB RAM, 8 MB of hard disk space, and a 4X CD-ROM drive. The software is fun to use. Images can be manipulated easily and quickly. They can be enlarged, switched to negative or enhanced in a number of ways. The software also allows any page from the census to be printed locally on a laser or inkjet printer. If you wish to print only a portion of a document, simply hold down the shift key as you click and drag a box around the desired print area. Once the box is drawn, you can adjust it more precisely, then click the print button, choose the print "Selection'' option in the print dialog box, and print your selection. An entire document or a selection portion can be copied using Windows' clipboard and then pasted into a paint program or image editor, making an image file. That image file then can be placed into your family tree software, providing you with an image of the documentation used for information about a particular ancestor. Scrolling through the CD images and selecting pages is done in a window on the left-hand side in a feature called Image Tree. As most genealogists soon discover, many of the original census microfilms are of poor quality, but the images on these CDs can be viewed with increased brightness and contrast, making them more readable. Additionally, you can use the cursor to target a precise area, then click the mouse to enlarge it up 800 percent. Simply right click to zoom out. Another feature is the Magnifying Glass. It gives you a bird's-eye view by zooming in on a portion of the page, leaving the rest of the page visible at its original screen size. You can even magnify just a single line at a time, if you wish. Heritage Quest, P.O. Box 329, Bountiful, UT 84011-0329, starts shipping the first CD-ROM disks soon. Retail prices will be about $19.95, with discounts for Heritage Quest Research Club members. To receive information about release of the CDs and other Heritage Quest products, subscribe (free) to the Heritage Quest Online Newsletter. Send e-mail messages to subscribe@heritagequest.com with the word "subscribe'' in the subject field. For more details about the new CDs, visit the Heritage Quest home website: http://www.heritagequest.com/genealogy/CD-ROM/ or call (801) 298-5358. Click Here  for Myra's Archive (c) 1999, Los Angeles Times Syndicate Myra Vanderpool Gormley and Julie Case are co-editors of Missing Links, a free weekly genealogy e-zine. To subscribe, send your request to: Missing Links Newsletter Return to Myra Vanderpool Gormley Main Page Return to Columns Main Page
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