Conceptual Modeling in Accelerating Information Ingest into Family Tree

Abstract

Family Tree is a wiki-like shared repository of interconnected family genealogies. Because information ingested into the tree requires human authorization as verified in source documents, ingest is tedious and time-consuming. To significantly increase ingest efficiency while maintaining human oversight, we propose a pipeline of tools and techniques to transform source document genealogical assertions into verified information in the Family Tree data repository. The automation pipeline transforms pages of printed, scanned and OCRed family history books into a GEDCOM X conceptualization that can be ingested into Family Tree. All steps of the pipeline are fundamentally grounded in ontological conceptualizations. We report on the pipeline implementation status and give results of initial case studies in semi-automatically ingesting information obtained from family history books into Family Tree.