062417_Family History Center

The new Family History Center in St George had an open house last week.  They dedicated it last Wednesday night and opened it for tours on Thursday morning, the 22nd.  We went to visit it and take a tour Thursday then I went back on Saturday evening just before they closed so I could get a couple of pictures.

The entry.  Those shades won't be up once they open.

 

At least in my mind, a lot of the stuff is pretty glitzy and not all that useful for researchers but it is pretty interesting.  It displays your LDS.org data in pretty interesting ways but it's still your data that you've come up with.  I didn't see any way to add more data but, then, it was only a few minutes at the several different stations.  Maybe I'll change my mind after I use it.  They give you a small tablet when you first walk in, you login to your LDS.org account then all your data is displayed in various different ways.  In this case, your family stands on certain spots and you select a background for a family photo.  The pict is then sent to the LDS.org email address on your account.

  

The main hall has everything you could possibly want.

  

In one room they have the ability to look at your family tree and look at each person.  You can see what was happening at times in their lives.

 

You stand there and use hand signals to select various images to represent what your ancestors looked like.  Not seeing a whole lot of use in this, personally. 

  

The tablet is on the right.  You can select an ancestor and look at their lives in great detail.

 

Over in the far corner is a child care corner.  Parents can bring in their kids, put them in the area in front of the computers, and keep an eye on them while they do research and the kids play.  It only has one exit and a lot of toys.  

 

This is available in other places on FamilySearch but it is pretty neat to see it on a huge screen.  It shows where your ancestors emigrated to where.

  

You can go back into a special room and, as a family, do a special session with an "interviewer" and come up with a kind of family session.  Kind of neat.

  

This is the research room.  I don't think this is nearly big enough but that's just me.

 

There are two classrooms for classes.  When there are no classes they said these can be used for research.  

They also have a place to turn slides into JPGs for digital format.  They only have one setup and I have hundreds of slides so I signed up to give it a try next week.  Should be interesting.  there are no films here at all.  Now, if I can only find Sarah Akin's parents....