Two Software Updates

FAMILY TREE MAKER, NEW AND IMPROVED

A new version of the popular Family Tree Maker genealogy software hit store shelves this fall. The creators of Family Tree Maker 9.0 have addressed some of users’ most common complaints and requests in the new version. Individual facts cards make it easier to navigate through a family file, with a dialog box that allows you to add new individuals while in tree or report view. Now you can attach images to sources, add siblings to the ancestor tree, print photos directly from the scrapbook, include e-mail addresses in the contact field and view your file history. To order and get more details, see <www.familytreemaker.com>.

A NEW QUEST

Sierra On-Line is getting out of the genealogy business. The company sold Heritage Quest to information giant ProQuest, which is taking over Heritage Quest’s Web site <www.heritagequest.com>, magazine, microfilm and CD-ROM titles, and books. ProQuest will revive Heritage Quest’s massive online census database, which was put on hold indefinitely at the beginning of this year. The census images and other Heritage Quest genealogy data were due to become part of ProQuest’s Genealogy and Local History Online, a Web-based database for libraries, by late fall.

PRESERVING CUBAN RECORDS

A major piece of the New World’s Colonial history will be preserved by a team of academics and archivists from the University of Florida and the Cuban National Archives. Researchers are making accessible more than 8 million handwritten records, which track the comings and goings of many ships and nearly every person who traveled between Spain and the New World from the 16th through 19th centuries, says John Ingram, the University of Florida’s director of library collections. Specialists will spend up to 18 months in Havana transferring the collection to microfilm and digital formats. Later, they will post a guide to these records on the Internet and sell copies of individual documents on CD-ROM. “These records will truly open a window in time,” Ingram says.

From the December 2001 issue of Family Tree Magazine