The Best Way to Preserve Family History Research
Biff Barnes
After a wonderful weekend at the Midwest Family History Expo in Kansas City, I was once again reminded of how much genealogists love research. Me too! But I also found myself having numerous conversations with people about what to do with their research.
Donna Przecha offered some good advice to family history researchers in her article From Planning to Printing: Your Family in Print on Genealogy.com. She said, “Devoted genealogists love going through their many collections of family group sheets, boxes of photographs, copies of census reports, notes from all sources and the ubiquitous photocopies of relevant pages of books. To us these are the building blocks of history — our personal history. However, if you want to get the attention of your children, your cousins, other people with the same surnames or even other genealogists, you have to present your material in a more concise and logical manner.”
Her conclusion was exactly the one we had been discussing at the Expo, “…the most efficient and logical way for most people is in a book…” I was happy to see that Przecha went on to advise people to, “Try not to make your book a recitation of names, dates and places. Add as much story as you possibly can.”
The other thing we frequently discussed with Expo visitors was limiting the scope of the book they wanted to create. A lifetime of research is often more than a single volume can reasonably contain. Deciding to limit a book to one line of the family or deciding on a chronological limit, the family’s arrival in the U.S. or the Civil War, or deciding to include three generations can all allow you to work with a manageable amount of material to include in your book.
Click her to see Donna Przecha’s complete article.