Principle:
GeneaBank is a site that is being managed by benevolent people who are fond of Genealogy, as well as of computers and Internet.
The purpose of GeneaBank is to provide a tool of data trading between genealogical clubs and associations which members have carried systematic data processing of parish registers and notary records.
GeneaBank is therefore a virtual bank which works on the « LES » principle, using "points". It allows clubs and societies to propose genealogical data in exchange of "points" in a manner confidential and secure.
The services provided by GeneaBank are totally free of charge; the purpose of its developers is to contribute to mutual help between genealogical associations.
Searching with GeneaBank:
Prior to be able to carry any such search, you must be allowed as a registered user.
How can one become a registered user of GeneaBank ?
Individual members are being registered by the presidents of participating associations.
Click here to display a list of associations that are participating to GeneaBank
If your genealogical club or association is a participating member of GeneaBank, you will then have to ask its president to register you; he will then assign a username and pswd to you. Using these, you will be authorised to search all databases registered with GeneaBank.
What should I do if my genealogical club is not a participating member of GeneaBank ?
- Try to convince your president and fellow members of the huge interest to join GeneaBank.
- If this fails, then apply for membership to another association which is a member of GeneaBank or is planning to become a member. If no such association is available, consider starting one.
- In the meantime, you should remain a member of your first association, since there is a much to bet that it will not be too long until it changes its mind about GeneaBank, to which purpose you will undoubtedly be able to help.
Once being granted the status of authorised user of GeneaBank, how shall I carry a practical search ?
A search is being done within a given club's database. Each database contains all the data available in said club or association, whatever places or categories of document may be involved. You may therefore need to search several databases.
A rule of thumb is to carry a first search on GeneaNet where most - if not all - data available through GeneaBank should be indexed.
Click here to display a list of participating associations
Once you have that list displayed, click on the chosen association name. This will return a search form. Fill it. You don't have to fill all the fields; the more many fields you fill, the more precise the search will be. Furthermore, when filling more many fields, you will get a lesser number of documents to visualise, which will result in a lesser cost in "points".
Once you have found a document of interest, if you wish to display it in details, you will have to "pay" a number of points (tokens) to the association who owns the said processed document. To this purpose, the president of the genealogical association to which you belong, will have credited your account of a number of GeneaBank points, this having been done while initiating your membership. In each association or club, the president or his designated responsible, will decide which number of points to be credited to any new member's account at start. This "gift" will not be renewed once spent, and, anyone needing more points will have to earn them.
On the database site, the means of payment are clearly explained : the number of found hits is being displayed together with the number of GeneaBank points to pay if the results are to be seen. If you accept, another form appears, asking for your username and pswd. After your filling and validating of this form, the results of your search are being displayed as an html array. (click here if you wish to see an example).
The same process may be tried again and again, as many times as needed, in ALL participating databases (and not only in those databases belonging to your own genealogical club or association)... this, as long as you have credit points left on GeneaBank.
How can associations and individuals collect more GeneaBank points ?
To this purpose, they will have to submit processed genealogical data. This will be done through their genealogical association, which will be credited of a number of points, which points the president of said association will return to those members having participated to the data processing work, points being distributed in amounts or proportions that will be up to him/her to decide.
VIEWING THE STATEMENT OF YOUR ACCOUNT :
To this purpose, please call GeneaBank at
https://www.geneabank.org/englid.html
and enter your username and pswd. You will then access to a page where several options are available:
WHY IS FRENCH GENEALOGICAL DATA NOT ALL FREELY AVAILABLE TO EVERYONE ?
You must realise that, in the old countries, the greatest part of parish registers and notary records have not yet been data processed. Furthermore, the Genealogical Society of Utah has only carried a part of its planned microfilming of parish registers, and, besides, notary records filming is not in their agenda. The amount of raw data available is estimated to xxx parish records and xxxx notary records, of which only n% have been processed so far.
There is therefore an enormous amount of work to be done, which could take up to 200 years if it was carried at the same rate as it has been so far by existing genealogical associations and clubs. For each parish register, there is a fair amount of work to do, a work that only skilled genealogists can achieve, a work that requires a good knowledge of a given region, its patronyms, its local history, its local slang with its variations in time, together with good notions of "palaeography", which is the science of reading ancient handwritings. Older documents often require the knowledge of Latin language, which, again, was being used in different manners from one region to the other, and from an era to the next in the same region. So, everyone can realise that data processing of genealogical data cannot be carried by just AnyOne. Furthermore, a good Genealogical data processing job cannot be done by just one person alone: it has to be the fruit of a team work involving several people within a given association: one does the primary reading and typing, asking for advice every time a name or date is hard to interpretate; another one reads it again and correct mistakes, etc...
All this being done, it is easy to understand why most genealogical clubs and associations feel that the resulting data belong to them. They will only let their subscribing members watch this dearly acquisited data, or they will sell it for money to non members or to other associations. In France, the Minitel (which is a kind of a local internet system only requiring a very cheap terminal) provides genealogical data online, at a fee which goes from 5 to 9 Francs per minute ($1 to $2 a minute); about 1/3 of the collected money goes to our state owned telephone company, 1/3 of it goes to the company that puts the data online, and the last third goes to the genealogical association. This is a lot of money, which the associations are affecting to various expenditures, including that of secretarial work for data processing. It is also a lot of money for individual genealogists to pay, especially once you see how slow is Minitel... It may cost up to $100 an hour, and, in one hour, you don't see that much...
I expect that this will help non French genealogists to understand why genealogical data is not available to everyone for free. At first, in many many cases, data is not available at all, unless one is prepared to spend days and months and years in town offices and AD (local archives departments), for a nearly blind search in reading hundreds of old handwritten books which are sometimes indecipherable.
In order to make the data available to everyone, it costs a lot of work and money; so, the data must either be sold of traded for similar services. It is the purpose of GeneaBank to provide a tool for such a trade, a tool that will cost a lot less than Minitel, a tool that will be available worldwide, a tool that will be more in accordance with the ethics of non profit organisations and benevolent workers, while protecting dearly processed data from being unfairly and unexpectedly exploited by money hungry business people in the background.
© GeneaBank 1998