When we talked about the members of the Church and
crowdsourcing, I thought about something I read a few months ago regarding family history work. There
is a new thing that is being placed on headstones—QR codes. This way, if
someone is looking at a headstone and wants to know more about who that person
was, he or she can scan the QR code with their smartphone and lookup the
information on that person. See this article for more information.
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| Courtesy of benchilada from flickr.com |
This code that is placed on these headstones can aid family
history work. By scanning the code, the users can have a link to the deceased
person’s information, such as date of birth, date of death, and family trees.
This could mean big things for family history work. I have a
grandpa who is really into family history work, and he would love it if something
like this were on every headstone. When he is doing research on our family, he
will go to the cemeteries, and take pictures of the headstone, and take them to
the library to see if he can find any more information about who that person
was. With this system, he won’t need to go to the library any more to look up
that information; he can look up who that person was right there on the spot,
saving lots of time.
Would we be able to put one of these on every headstone in the
world, though? Not likely. But it’s interesting to think about. These are
becoming more common now, and may become a standard part of the headstone.
