[Genealib] New Features on the One-Step Website

[Joy Rich]

New features on the One-Step website ( http://stevemorse.org )

1. Phonetic Name Matching:
Steve Morse, together with Alexander Beider, has developed a method of phonetic name
matching that has advantages over soundex name matching. Soundex matching considers the
way the name is spelled, whereas phonetic matching considers the way the name is
pronounced. The pronunciation is language specific, and a determination of the language is
made from the spelling of the name. As a consequence, a soundex search will result in a
large number of false hits that the researcher needs to examine, whereas a phonetic search
will give relatively few false hits.

The phonetic name matching has been or is about to be included on several existing
One-Step search forms. These include the gold form for searching for passengers in the
Ellis Island database (coming soon) as well as the One-Step Dachau Concentration Camp
search form. In addition, the two new search forms described below (Searching
Naturalization Records and Searching Reference Books) also include phonetic name matching.

2. Searching Naturalization Records in One Step
A commercial website, footnote.com, has collections of naturalization records for several
states. There are currently about two million records in this collection. However, the
search facility for finding people in these collections is very limited in its abilities.
A new One-Step form has been developed to provide flexible searches through these records.

This new form appears in the Vital Records section of the One-Step site.

3. Searching Reference Books
There are several reference books containing Jewish surnames in various countries. Most of
these books have been written by Alexander Beider, and one was written by Lars Menk. A new
One-Step form has been developed for searching for names in these books.

This new form appears in the Holocaust and Eastern Europe section of the One-Step site.

4. New Orleans Ship Records
A commercial website, ancestry.com, has the ship records for the major US ports. These
include the ports of  New York, Boston, Philadelphia, Baltimore, Galveston, and San
Francisco. The One-Step website already had a trio of search forms for each of those
ports: one to simplify the search for passengers, a second to provide for direct access to
the manifest microfilms if you know the roll and frame number, and a third to determine
the roll and frame number for any ship arrival. Now, the One-Step site has added such
tools for the Port of New Orleans as well.

These new forms appear in the Other Ports section of the One-Step site.

5. French Revolutionary Calendar Converter and Muslim Calendar Converter
The One-Step site has had a Jewish Calendar Converter for some time. Two more calendar
converters have been added to the One-Step site, one for the French Revolutionary Calendar
and the other for the Muslim Calendar. The French Revolutionary calendar is unique in that
it takes decimalization to the extreme. The Muslim calendar is purely lunar with no
synchronization to the seasons.

These appear in the Calendar section of the One-Step site.

6. Arabic Transliterator
The One-Step site already had transliterators between Hebrew and English, between Cyrillic
and English, and between Greek and English. Recently, a transliterator for Arabic was
added.

This appears in the Foreign Language section of the One-Step site.

Joy

Joy Rich
Chapter Representative, New York Metro Chapter
Association of Professional Genealogists
http://www.apgen.org
http://www.apgen.org/chapters/newyork