BYU creates genealogy tutorial

PROVO — A team of Brigham Young University students and faculty members have created a new free online tutorial for the Personal Ancestral File program.

It is available at paftutorial.byu.edu.

Originally created for students in BYU family history classes, the interactive tutorial is most helpful to those not familiar with the widely used PAF program from The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints.

Tutorial participants can pick and choose which areas of PAF they need to know more about by clicking on either a step-by-step textual guide or an interactive demonstration for each point of reference in the menu.

Because of audio components, the interactive demonstrations require speakers or headphones to listen to instructions.

The tutorial covers the entire PAF program, from importing information from other family history programs to exporting information to the church's TempleReady program.

The project was developed through the cooperation of BYU's Center for Instructional Design, the Center for Family History and Genealogy and Kip Sperry, a BYU professor of family history.

For more information about PAF and family history, go to familyhistory.byu.edu.