IGI on Computer is a 48 page paperback, price £2.40, ISBN 0 948151 16 1.
The book describes the use of the International Genealogical Index on CDROM. It covers searching, printing and copying records, and ways of using the downloaded data on home computers. It describes use for IGI analysis of genealogy packages, conversion utilities, and mapping programs, with many examples. Appendices give examples of all IGI event types and features, description of GEDCOM formats, and detail of the way source descriptions are included in GEDCOM version 5.5 as used in PAF 3.0.
Introduction 3; Description of the IGI 4; Searching the IGI 5; Types of record, duplication & approximation 8; Wales - given name search & patronymics 10
Printing and holding file 11; Disk formats 13;Ordinances, sources, instructions 14
Text format (ASCII) or GEDCOM 15;Printing a text file in a word processor 17
IGIREAD 18; CONVIGED 21; IGI255 21;GIPSI 22; GenMap UK 23; BIRDIE 24
Personal Ancestral File (PAF) 28; Pedigree 30; Family Tree Maker 30;Brother's Keeper 32; The Master Genealogist (TMG) 32
Scottish Church Records 34; Ancestral File 34;SSDI - U.S. Social Security Death Index 35; Military Deaths Index 35;Family History Library Catalogue 36;Accents and National Characters 37
A new version of FamilySearch is was issued to FamilySearch sites in the first half of 1998. The major change is that the "IGI" entry on the main menu no longer gives access to LDS Ordinance information. There is a new item "Ordinance Index" on the main FamilySearch menu which does give access to LDS Ordinances. Downloads I have seen so far have the same events from both indexes, but there may be some events which appear in only one index. I have been told before that some "resource files" would be added to the IGI in due course.
In the new IGI, some surnames have angle brackets <> round them in both GEDCOM and ASCII downloads. In ASCII downloads of these records, the sex M or F has angle brackets around it. A note in each record in the GEDCOM version says: "Since the sex of this individual was not listed in the source record, the computer generated the sex based on the given name". My information on this was kindly provided by Gerhard Ruf, and an example of an event with this feature is Adam Friedrich <RUF> (<M>) born 7 Jan 1804, "of, Mutschelbach, Karlsruhe, Baden".
The IGI and other databases of the LDS Church are available
for search on-line at www.familysearch.org
The author has written a separate book about this, FamilySearch on the Internet.
There is now an enhanced version of IGIREAD which converts information from other LDS databases, including the 1881 census on CDROM. It is called LDS Companion.
The catalog is now available as a CDROM on public sale from distribution centres of the LDS Church.
This page amended by David Hawgood on 29 May 2000