Bill's Genealogy Blog

Bill Buchanan is a long-time genealogy enthusiast, living in Spruce Grove, Alberta, Canada. This blog will describe my experiences as I research my family history and help others.

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Location: Spruce Grove, Alberta, Canada

I am a retired online school teacher. I love family history. From 2007-2020, I spent much of my time providing part-time support for the world's largest free family history site https://familysearch.org This is very rewarding. I have helped others with the Family Tree and related FamilySearch products.
In 2010-2018 I served in the Edmonton_Alberta_Riverbend_Family_History_Centre..I have a FHC blog at Bill's Family History Center Blog Since 2020 I have been a family history consultant for Edmonton Alberta North Stake. For information on the Latter-day Saints and family history click https://www.comeuntochrist.org/

Wednesday, March 07, 2012

Serving in World-wide Support

I have chosen to take phone calls from 8 AM to 5 PM on Mondays and Fridays. On a typical shift I get 15-20 phone calls, so maybe two per hour on the average. I love serving on the phones because it is usually possible to resolve the patron's problem in an hour or less and I like to able to actually talk to the other person. 

Monday, March 5 was a good day. It started off with a thank you in a Reply from a patron. Later, I was transferring a caller to FHC Support and the other support missionary thanked me for helping her the previous week.

And I had a funny experience. I was helping a computer-challenged patron. After about an hour on the phone I had managed to get her to the right website, create a desktop shortcut, recover her fogotten user name, and reset the password. At this point I guided her to use the desktop shortcut to get back to the website she wanted to use, and asked her to sign in. Then we hit a snag. "I am using the user name, exactly like it gave me! Why won't it let me sign in?" I asked her whether she was also typing in the password, exactly as it is written on her paper. "You mean, I have to put the password in TOO?" I nearly choked trying hard not to laugh!!!  When she put in the user name and password she was able to sign in. Success!!! 

We don't serve for the thanks we receive from our patrons but it does make the service sweet.

Tomorrow night I will be teaching a lesson at the Edmonton Riverbend Family History Center. My topic will be "And to think that I saw it … on FamilySearch.org" i.e. an overview of our main research website.

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