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billiongraves.com/geni==
Welcome to the BillionGraves Team Portal!==
This is the home base for Geni users who want to help with the collaborative effort between Geni and BillionGraves to help photograph and transcribe all the world's gravestones in order to preserve them and their information for future generations. Any and all Geni users who wish to participate in any way are encouraged to join our team by 1) clicking on the "Actions" button at the top right of this page, then "Join Project" and 2) registering at billiongraves.com/geni.
Please note that you can still participate even if you can't visit or photograph cemeteries!
Ways to Participate
- Photographing graves
- Transcribing graves from home
- Submitting new cemeteries
- Adding supporting documents
- And more! (Read on...)
What Is BillionGraves?
BillionGraves is a one-of-a-kind application (available for both iOS and Android) which uses patent-pending technology to enable users to photograph and document gravestones. With the help of MyHeritage, our parent company, the app will be available in 25 languages, and support Gregorian, Hebrew and Julian dates. It 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 gravestone photographs are then transcribed by volunteers on the BillionGraves website, resulting in searchable digital data.
You can learn more by visiting the website at
billiongraves.com/geni==
Why Get Involved?
In the world of genealogy, gravestones play an important role in telling us information about our ancestors. They can not only provide the name, birth and death date of the deceased, but also the names of close relatives. Epitaphs often provide insight into the person’s life, and may include a brief description of their personality or character. However, gravestones in thousands of cemeteries worldwide have never been documented nor has their information been made available or searchable online. And time is not on our side. Age, and exposure to the elements, means that what is written on the stone eventually fades, making it harder, and sometimes impossible to see who is buried there. BillionGraves gives us the tools to preserve these headstones and store their valuable information online for the future.
Records Use on Geni
The records will be available for free on BillionGraves’s website, and SuperSearch™, MyHeritage’s search engine for historical records. These records can be easily accessed through the “Research this Person” link found on your Geni profiles. Each record will contain photographs of the gravestone, GPS coordinates and an index of corresponding information.
Thanks to MyHeritage’s powerful matching technology, you will automatically be notified of Record Matches whenever these new cemetery records match your relatives’ Geni profiles, saving you a lot of valuable time in your family history research. Simply navigate to your Merge Center to view all the Record Matches found for your tree. Or click on the Record Match icon on your relatives’ profiles to see what new cemetery records have been matched to your tree.
Our Team's Goals
Some of the ways our team will be supporting the Geni/BillionGraves collaboration will be:
- Photographing gravestones using the BillionGraves app
- Transcribing information from gravestones using the app or website
- Providing language and cultural assistance for cemeteries worldwide
- Getting other Geni friends to join in the effort to save these stones
We will be organizing photography and transcription efforts in dozens of regions and countries, so Geni users all over the world representing many languages and cultures will be able to participate in this exciting, truly global project.
We may even have some friendly competitions to keep ourselves motivated and have a little fun!
If you're ready to give it a shot, please download the app and get registered with BillionGraves, and don't forget to join this Geni project as well!
billiongraves.com/geni