Ancestry.com has just added the Shoebox feature; a page that tracks all the records you printed or downloaded, so you can easily find these again.
The Shoebox is more than a friendly-sounding way for Ancestry.com to admit that it has been
tracking your usage of their website all along.
Ancestry.com may be tracking your usage, but the Shoebox is not about that. It
is about easily finding things again that you found before. There frequently are
complaints about Ancestry.com search, so the bookmarking of found pages should
be very welcome. You are allowed to
delete items from your shoebox, so you can focus on the items that really matter
to you.
I know from experience that this is a very handy feature. From experience,
because the Ellis Island Site has offered the capability to bookmark documents
of interest since its relaunch
back in 2004.
Footnote allows you to bookmark pages and Footnote's Interactive census has an Add to Gallery
button; they do not just bookmark the page, but show a thumbnail as well, with a
highlight on the line that made you bookmark the page.
On footnote, I've searched for and bookmarked all census pages containing families bearing a possibly Dutch name that I am researching. I cannot connect these families to the genealogy for that name yet. The gallery of bookmarked census pages reminds me that I still have to find out whether these families belong in that genealogy or not.
The ability to bookmark pages of interest is a handy feature, one you should take advantage of and most likely quickly come to rely upon. Just remember that although it is great that you do not need to search for pages once you've bookmarked them, that you may still want to perform old-fashioned searches to find additions since your last search.
Ancestry has acquired Footnote, see Ancestry.com Buying Spree.
Ancestry has renamed Footnote to Fold3, see Ancestry renames Footnote to Fold3. The Footnote link has been updated.
Copyright © Tamura Jones. All Rights reserved.