Like many other people, I became interested in my ancestors when I started hearing their life stories- especially their own stories from their personal diaries, journals, and letters. I also found that even if an ancestor didn't write their own journal, their family and friends often wrote about them. But it was hard to track down journals of my ancestors, or journals that mentioned them. Those important family documents usually get passed down one line of a family, and other descendants don't know where to find them or even that they exist.
The Historic Journals project is the solution to that problem. It is a central archive where each of us can privately (or publicly) make family journals and documents available to other descendants who we may have never even met. By tagging a journal's author and the people they wrote about with a unique "person identifier" from the massive FamilySearch tree of ancestors, the system automatically finds tagged materials for the ancestors of users who log in through their FamilySearch account. Automatic transcription of type-printed documents is available on the site, and collaborative tagging and transcribing of handwritten documents is a great family activity. Of course, the archive accepts other documents and photos, too, not just journals. Audio and video archival will be available soon.
In addition to the archive, collaboration, and sharing features on the site, there are also powerful tools to help you more quickly and interactively view and analyze your family pedigree, and to find problems in the pedigree data. Map tools are fully integrated with the pedigree. The "today in your family's history" feature is great for family gatherings and reunions. Search and discovery tools make it easy to find information about Mormon pioneer ancestors who settled the Inter-Mountain West of the United States (the pioneers of the 1800's are the ancestors is of millions of people with roots in Utah and the surrounding areas as far north as Alberta, Canada, south to Arizona and northern Mexico, and west to California).
The initial version of the project requires FamilySearch Tree information for most of the searches, GEDCOM upload and matching will eventually be supported for those who do not have pedigree information in the FamilySearch Tree. While we have (so far) focused quite a bit on pioneer ancestors who are of great interest to people with roots in the western United States, the same technologies will be applied to other regions and populations of ancestors as the site grows and expands.
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