AI
Artificial intelligence has become a genuine part of my research toolkit, not as a replacement for primary sources, but as an assistant for the surrounding work: organizing findings, drafting citations, transcribing difficult handwriting, and thinking through research strategy. This list will continue to grow as I add the tools, courses, and resources I've found useful, along with examples and critiques.
This Site
Built with Claude (Anthropic)
This website itself is a collaboration with Claude, an AI assistant I utilized to rebuild my website and move it from an expensive hosting platform to a set of free services. After presenting me with several options, Claude ultimately walked me through a rebuild utilizing the free Eleventy static site generator, free hosting on GitHub Pages, Zoho's free domain email service, Formspree's free forms, and Cloudflare's free Turnstile form protection. I now utilize Claude for troubleshooting code and thinking through citation formatting. Claude does not do primary research or verify facts; that work is mine, using original records and archives. What it does well is the surrounding scaffolding: turning my notes into properly structured data, catching inconsistencies I ask it to flag, and helping me keep a growing site organized. Every fact on this site is still sourced and verified the old-fashioned way.
AI Tools for Genealogy Research
FamilySearch Full-Text Search (Free subscription)
FamilySearch utilizes AI-powered handwriting recognition to transcribe and index a growing share of its previously unsearchable microfilm collection, making millions of scanned record images searchable by keyword for the first time. I've found the most surprising things through this research, including the full divorce record for my great great grandfather and his fifth wife, as well as a surprising court document dismissing murder charges against a great uncle! The interface is user friendly, the results are legible, and the download is not only simple, but it includes the citations. This has become one of my most frequently-used genealogy tools.
Ancestry (Paid subscription)
In addition to Ancestry's use of AI to present potentially relevant records and tree connections, Ancestry has added a full-text search feature that searches through the text in books, stories and newspapers. I have not found this full-text search to yield the quality and scope of Family-Search full-text searches, but I'm very happy to have this extra tool from Ancestry.