Physical Sciences and Mathematics Commons^™

Recommender Systems For Family History Source Discovery, Derrick James Brinton

Theses and Dissertations

As interest in family history research increases, greater numbers of amateurs are participating in genealogy. However, finding sources that provide useful information on individuals in genealogical research is often an overwhelming task, even for experts. Many tools assist genealogists in their work, including many computer-based systems. Prior to this work, recommender systems had not yet been applied to genealogy, though their ability to navigate patterns in large amounts of data holds great promise for the genealogical domain. We create the Family History Source Recommender System to mimic human behavior in locating sources of genealogical information. The recommender system is seeded …

Automatic Extraction From And Reasoning About Genealogical Records: A Prototype, Charla Jean Woodbury

Theses and Dissertations

Family history research on the web is increasing in popularity, and many competing genealogical websites host large amounts of data-rich, unstructured, primary genealogical records. It is labor-intensive, however, even after making these records machine-readable, for humans to make these records easily searchable. What we need are computer tools that can automatically produce indices and databases from these genealogical records and can automatically identify individuals and events, determine relationships, and put families together. We propose here a possible solution—specialized ontologies, built specifically for extracting information from primary genealogical records, with expert logic and rules to infer genealogical facts and assemble relationship …

The 20-Minute Genealogist: A Context-Preservation Metaphor For Assisted Family History Research, Charles D. Knutson, Jonathan Krein

Faculty Publications

What can you possibly do to be productive as a family history researcher in 20 minutes per week? Our studies suggest that currently the answer is, “Nothing.” In 20 minutes a would-be researcher can’t even remember what happened last week, let alone what they were planning to do next. The 20-Minute Genealogist is a powerful metaphor within which software solutions must consider context preservation as the fundamental domain of the system, thus freeing the researcher to do research while the software manages the tasks that computers do best. Two survey-based studies were conducted that indicate a significant disconnect between the …

Contour Encoded Compression And Transmission, Christopher B. Nelson

Theses and Dissertations

As the need for digital libraries, especially genealogical libraries, continues to rise, the need for efficient document image compression is becoming more and more apparent. In addition, because many digital library users access them from dial-up Internet connections, efficient strategies for compression and progressive transmission become essential to facilitate browsing operations. To meet this need, we developed a novel method for representing document images in a parametric form. Like other “hybrid" image compression operations, the Contour Encoded Compression and Transmission (CECAT) system first divides images into foreground and background layers. The emphasis of this thesis revolves around improving the compression …

Digital Roots Of Human Relations: Enabling Technologies For Family History And Genealogical Research, William A. Barrett

Faculty Publications

Flowing out of a Computer Science research lab on the third floor of the Talmage Building is a wellspring of enabling technologies for family history and genealogical research. Here, computer science students, working under the direction of Dr. Tom Sederberg and Dr. Bill Barrett are creating software tools to help individuals with their family history research so that people everywhere can seek out their ancestors and perform vital ordinances in their behalf, as desired. These tools include visualization of an entire pedigree on a single (large) sheet of paper, the ability to automatically calculate if and how two or more …

Automating The Extraction Of Domain-Specific Information From The Web-A Case Study For The Genealogical Domain, Troy L. Walker

Theses and Dissertations

Current ways of finding genealogical information within the millions of pages on the Web are inadequate. In an effort to help genealogical researchers find desired information more quickly, we have developed GeneTIQS, a Genealogy Target-based Information Query System. GeneTIQS builds on ontology-based methods of data extraction to allow database-style queries on the Web. This thesis makes two main contributions to GeneTIQS. (1) It builds a framework to do generic ontology-based data extraction. (2) It develops a hybrid record separator based on Vector Space Modeling that uses both formatting clues and data clues to split pages into component records. The record …

Probabilistic Methodology For Record Linkage Determining Robustness Of Weights, Krista Peine Jensen

Theses and Dissertations

Record linkage is the process that joins separately recorded pieces of information for a particular individual from one or more sources. To facilitate record linkage, a reliable computer based approach is ideal. In genealogical research computerized record linkage is useful in combing information for an individual across multiple censuses.

In creating a computerized method for linking censuse records it needs to be determined if weights calculated from one geographical area, can be used to link records from another geographical area. Research performed by Marcie Francis calculates field weights using census records from 1910 and 1920 for Ascension Parish Louisiana. These …