Last week, ORA the Online Repository Assistant, was updated to ORA 1.84. ORA is unique among genealogy software – it’s a Windows program + web browser extension (Google Chrome, Microsoft Edge, Firefox, Opera) and is sold as a subscription service ($24 USD a year). It’s meant to make genealogy research much easier when using online repositories, including (but not limited to) Ancestry.com, FamilySearch, FindMyPast, BillionGraves, Find a Grave, JewishGen, Newspapers.com, American Ancestors, Fold3, and many others.
It even helps extract the information from pages you are looking at as well as easily see which pages you have already looked at (for instance, certain BMD records about a specific individual on Ancestry.com will have an indicator showing that you’ve looked at those records. It can also help extract data from web pages that are not listed among ORA’s supported repositories. See the screenshot at the bottom for a small sample of what it can do.
If you use one or more of the supported repositories (list: https://www.ora-extension.com/en/repositories.htm) I think it would probably be money well spent, as it will save you a lot of time. I have some massive spreadsheets that track records I’ve looked at, and this would make it a lot easier to see on the page what you have already looked at or whether you are unsure about it.
You can read more about it on the ORA website – https://www.ora-extension.com/en/contents.htm (including videos).
This version contains updates for Ancestry.com and FindMyPast users, as well as updates for those doing Canadian and Australian research.
| Changes in ORA 1.84 |
| Ancestry: When a Field value on a image collection contains links for data values (such as linked place names), ORA will now extract the link text (example, Ancestry image collection notes) This is another exception to an ORA rule where Fields that contain links and buttons are ignored, which is usually the best outcome. |
| Findmypast: Added support for certain image-only collections (example, United States, Transatlantic Migration Image) |
| Place Transforms: Adjusted place tables to improve locale detection for historical Canadian provinces and for Australian state abbreviations: – Lower Canada (example) – W Canada (example) – Canada West (example) – Canada East (example) – S Australia (example) |
| Fixes: Transforms: Improved error and/or invalid value handling in dateDifference |
Changelog with links: https://www.ora-extension.com/en/changelog.htm?v=1.84
Below is an example of what it can do – this is from Ancestry.com search results, and the green checkmark shows that you’ve accepted/processed that record and used it to update a record in your database.
The “P” you see at the bottom is for “Pending” meaning that you have seen that record and believe that it applies to your research, but you are not going to process or accept that record at the moment.
Instead of the green checkmark or the “P“, you can also assign it “S” meaning that you believe it applies to your research, but you decided to skip it and not process it (maybe it added nothing new or you’ve acquired the information in that record from other sources or sites). You can also use a “?” for records that might apply to your research, but do not want to look at the record at that point in time and will look at it later. There is also a red “No” symbol showing that a record does not apply to your research and you should not investigate it in the future.
