MyHeritage and a Billion Graves start to digitally preserve the world’s cemeteries

Both MyHeritage and its partner a Billion Graves is undertaking a huge project – they want to digitally preserve the world’s cemeteries. 

They say that “The effort is being conducted by both companies free of charge. The hope is to "crowdsource" an effort to digitally preserve every cemetery and gravestone in the world. The companies are working together to providing the content online for everyone to see, free of charge. This project is important and beneficial for genealogists everywhere”.

They have produced a short video at the MyHeritage blog 

http://blog.myheritage.com/2014/03/video-myheritage-team-digitizes-cemetery/

The a Billion Graves blog describing the project at http://blog.billiongraves.com/2014/03/all-billiongraves-users-be-part-of-your-own-success-story-myheritage-shows-you-how

MyHeritage and a BillionGraves Announcement

MyHeritage and a BillionGraves have a new imitative to announce  -

Dear friends

I'm delighted to share with you that MyHeritage has teamed up with BillionGraves to launch a global initiative to digitally preserve the world's cemeteries.

As we know, gravestones are very important for genealogy due to the rich information they contain, such as names, dates and biographical details. But there are thousands of cemeteries worldwide whose gravestones have never been documented nor has their information been made available or searchable online.

In addition, time is chipping away at the gravestones and many are becoming unreadable over the years.

Over the next few weeks, we’ll be working with our global community to preserve and document gravestones worldwide, for future generations, using the BillionGraves app. The app uses patent-pending technology to let users photograph and document gravestones, and, with the help of MyHeritage, the app will be available in 25 languages, and will support Gregorian, Hebrew and Julian dates. The app also records the GPS locations of gravestones to make them easy to find, and volunteers can easily see which areas of any cemetery remain undocumented, to maximize efficiency and avoid duplication.

The records will be available free on BillionGraves' website, and MyHeritage's search engine for historical records, SuperSearch. MyHeritage's Record Matching technologies will ensure that our users will receive notifications whenever a gravestone matches their family tree.

Best regards

Daniel Horowitz
Chief Genealogist and Translation Manager

At the same time they issued a news release in which they said –

“We’re thrilled to embark on this global initiative with BillionGraves", said Gilad Japhet, Founder and CEO of MyHeritage. “Gravestones are among the most valuable information sources for family history research, and although there are many thousands of cemeteries worldwide, most of them have never been documented, and their information is not available online. Time is chipping away at the gravestones and many are becoming unreadable over the years, so it’s up to our generation to preserve them.”

“We’re delighted to work with MyHeritage on digitizing the world’s cemeteries”, said Hudson Gunn, President of BillionGraves. “At BillionGraves we are working to provide a comprehensive family history database for records and images from the world’s cemeteries—but it’s not something we can do alone.With MyHeritage’s support in mobilizing its massive user community and working with us to launch in 25 languages, we’ll be able to provide incredible value for millions of families and preserve this valuable data for generations to come.”

Over the coming weeks, MyHeritage users will receive documentation about the project and will be able to download the application via a special website designed for this project.

MyHeritage is available at www.myheritage.com

This is an interesting press release because it shows an alliance has been struck between MyHeritage and FamilySearch. They say it will benefit all family historians. What do you think?

TEL AVIV, Israel & SALT LAKE CITY, Utah – October 9, 2013 – MyHeritage, the popular online family history network, and FamilySearch.org announced today the signing and commencement of a strategic partnership that forges a new path for the family history industry. Under this multi-year partnership, MyHeritage will provide FamilySearch with access to its powerful technologies and FamilySearch will share billions of global historical records and family tree profiles spanning hundreds of years with MyHeritage. This will help millions of MyHeritage and FamilySearch users discover even more about their family history.

FamilySearch will provide MyHeritage with more than 2 billion records from its global historic record collections and its online Family Tree. These records will be added to SuperSearch , MyHeritage’s search engine for historical records, and will be matched with family trees on MyHeritage using its matching technologies. MyHeritage users will gain access to an unprecedented boost of historical records and family tree profiles, which are key to researching and reconstructing their family histories. This reinforces MyHeritage's position as an international market leader, with gigantic assets of family trees and records, which are the most globally diverse in the industry.

FamilySearch members will benefit from MyHeritage's unique technologies which automate family history discoveries. Smart Matching™ automatically finds connections between user-contributed family trees and Record Matching automatically locates historical records relevant to any person in the family tree. By receiving accurate matches between FamilySearch’s Family Tree profiles and historical record collections, such as birth, death, census, and immigration documents, FamilySearch members will be able to more effectively grow their family trees in size and in depth and add conclusions supported by historical records.

“For more than a hundred years, FamilySearch has been dedicated to working with the world’s archives to preserve their records for future generations” said Gilad Japhet, Founder and CEO of MyHeritage. “Their massive undertaking has made family history more accessible to everyone. This partnership highlights MyHeritage’s technology leadership and our firm commitment to adding historical records on a massive global scale, accelerating our vision of helping families everywhere explore and share their legacy online. We look forward to a fruitful future working hand in hand with our friends at FamilySearch.”

“FamilySearch values collaborative partnerships that enable more people, in more places, to discover their family history” said Dennis Brimhall, CEO of FamilySearch. “MyHeritage is an innovative company that has a fast growing, global online audience. We are excited to commence this partnership which enables FamilySearch to better serve the global family history community.”

Postscript: I would like to say thank you to the reader who sent me notice of this press release.