How to Write Your Family History

Using MyFamily.com

info@familybiobook.com (Teresa H.) — Fri, 27 Jun 2008 04:27:00 GMT

There are so many ways to stay connected with your family (see blog on Staying in Touch). I want to talk in depth about one that I use, MyFamily.com. This site allows you to set up your own website for your family. It is a very simple process, no programming experience is necessary. You can create a name for your site, add your family members and they will each get their own secure log in and password.

You can put in all their important information, including full names, addresses, phone numbers, e-mails, birth dates, marriage dates, show how they are related by picking their parents from your list, pictures and there are even several custom fields you can use for whatever other data you want to include.

I entered as much historical data as I could so that we could have a complete historical list of all family members. This helps you show how everyone is connected. It also allows you to print out different charts, reports and lists.

On the main page of your site, you can add photos, notes, polls on different subjects and even share files. Additionally, you can upload a family tree, even if it was created in a different program.

All of these features, plus additional ones like being able to e-mail everyone at once, make this a valuable tool for staying in touch with your family and obtaining even more valuable historical information.

Preserving your photos & documents digitally

info@familybiobook.com (Teresa H.) — Sat, 21 Jun 2008 16:51:00 GMT

With all the new, and affordable, technology out there, it is easier than ever to preserve your important documents. Photos don't last forever (about 100 years depending on the paper, ink, etc.) and documents deteriorate rapidly if not properly cared for. In order to preserve these items for your family's history, I highly recommend scanning them in and saving them digitally as soon as possible. The other key part to this process is to then save them somewhere safe, other than your computer, to make sure you don't accidentally lose this data.

Let's start with paper documents. Paper, newspaper, basically printed documents of any kind, will start to yellow and fall apart quickly. If you want to try to preserve the original document, you can get something called deacidification spray. You spray this onto your paper documents and it helps them resist aging, yellowing, turning brittle. One in particular that I use is called Archival Mist. I bought it at a craft store, but there are now several places including Target and Ritz Camera that carry this product as well. The 1.5 oz. bottle will protect approximately 5 square feet of paper when used as directed. Although this will slow down the aging process significantly, the spray is expensive. My recommendation is to scan these documents, even if they are sprayed, so that you can make sure they are preserved.

Now for preserving photos. If you are preserving your photos by placing them in scrapbooks, it is important to make sure that everything used in the scrapbook and the book itself are archival quality. Here is a link to the National Archives site that may answer many of your questions about preserving photos: Family Archives. I am fortunate to have many historical photos from my family that are in good condition. At the last family reunion, I asked my family members to mail me their original photos so that I could scan them and make sure they are preserved, then I mailed the originals back. If they do not want to risk mailing originals, ask them to scan the photos or have them scanned and sent to you so that you can make sure all the photos and documents about your family are in one safe location.

Digital storage is the next important component of preserving your records. Although it is fine to save them to your computer hard drive or an external drive, this is not a fail-safe method of keeping records. If something happens to your computer, you would lose all those records and have to start over. I recommend uploading photos and scanned documents to a digital photo website, such as Snapfish or Shutterfly, there are many different services. This is one more way to store information so you don't have to rely on your computer integrity. The other service I use to give myself one more level of security, is an online backup service for my whole computer. The service I use is called Mozy. You can backup unlimited amounts of data to this service for only $4.95 per month. I believe this is well worth the price to have the piece of mind that your data is backed up somewhere offsite and you can easily restore it if something happens to your home and/or computer.

Although it may be time consuming to digitally preserve all the documents you already have, I believe it is well worth the time invested. As you continue to digitize your photos and documents, it will get easier if you develop a plan and stick to it.

Please let me know if you have any questions on any of this, or if you have found a product or service to be helpful I would love to hear about it. Just click on Add Comment to send me your questions or suggestions.

Staying in Touch

info@familybiobook.com (Teresa H.) — Thu, 19 Jun 2008 01:11:00 GMT

It is easier than ever to keep in touch with your family using all the new technology. This post will explore some of the methods I use. The first one, is e-mail. Most people now how to use that, at a minimum. If you have older family members who are not technology savvy, you can alway send those few people snail mail, but you would be surprised how many of them are online and know how to do at least the basics of e-mail. Most, if not all, e-mail services allow you to create a group of your contacts. This is a good way to send information only to your family members about upcoming events or announcements. Once you have added everyone to a group, you can send a message to the whole group at once without having to individually pick or type in their e-mail addresses. It is also easy to update if anyone changes their e-mail.

There are several online applications you can use in addition to e-mail, including Facebook, MySpace, Twitter and MyFamily. They each have different options and capabilities. The first three are basically social networking sites where people can post their personal profile information, pictures, videos, contact information, etc. These are free and easy to sign up for and may help you find a lot of the younger generations of your family. You can send messages through most of them that will be private for the person receiving them. You can also create Bulletins and messages that everyone sees.

MyFamily is used to set up your own custom family website. They walk you through the steps and only your family members will be able to see your site, after they log in. This site has been helpful with my large family since it allows me to post messages, create polls, add pictures, list events in a calendar and send mass e-mails to everyone on the list. It has also been invaluable in allowing me to quickly find addresses or phone numbers for family members. There is a charge for creating a site on here, they have a few different plans depending on how much space you need. I have found that it has been well worth the money to have this connection with my family.

With all these tools available, get out there and get in touch with your family! If you have any questions on any of these services, please submit a comment and I will try to help.

Welcome

info@familybiobook.com (Teresa H.) — Sat, 14 Jun 2008 01:19:00 GMT

Welcome!

This blog will provide you with valuable, relevant information regarding family history and preservation. I have been interested in family history since I was a little girl, and am now the historian for our family. I have planned two of our family reunions, created a family biography book and a family website. I also created a scrapbook from one of our reunions and am an avid scrapbooker. I am fortunate that the previous generations in my family took lots of pictures (which we still have) and kept good records. I am also lucky that my aunt spent much of her life interviewing family members and researching the history we did not have.

This is truly a labor of love, a love for preserving history to pass down to future generations of our family. I have been truly fascinated to learn about the people in my family and am excited that I will have a part in documenting that information.

I welcome any specific questions you have on this topic and any helpful comments. I created a website to share my biography book templates with those who are struggling to figure out what to do or how to make it work. You can go to www.familybiobook.com to see the templates and get other helpful information for family history.

I look forward to sharing all that I have learned over the years, and learning even more from my readers.