Liverpool & South West Lancashire FHS - Forum

I apologise if this has been done to death a hundred times (I have trawled through old posts as best I can).

How do you store your family history?

In recent years, I've developed a mistrust of technology. There are so many loopholes in internet security - and once you put information online, whether your settings are private or not, you run the risk of gifting all your hard work to others. For this reason I have never felt inclined to invest in any family tree software. (The bulk of my family tree was recorded until recently on Ancestry. Yes... I know). Also, computers and technology are changing all the time. I have stuff backed up on cds from a few years ago that will no longer run on my machines. In ten years time will any of it still work

So. I have gone back to the old method of keeping everything on paper in wallets and folders - my reasoning being that, aside from fire, flood and vermin, records have lasted on paper for centuries. However, I have just so much clutter! My reason for researching my family history was to leave it for future generations, but I'm thinking my daughter will take one look at my mountain of paperwork after I've gone and condemn it to a skip. I suppose the idea is still to put it into book form at some point, but I still have a long way to go.

Don't laugh. I bought a roll of paper - you know the kind that is sold for children's painting easels? - and stuck it all around the walls of my spare room upstairs. I then wrote out the part of my family tree that I'm working on in marker pen, so that I don't have to open windows on my laptop to find information when I'm writing - I just glance up.

I also have a private FH blog that I've been adding to for a couple of years.

How do you organise your information?

I decided to find out where I came from in order to tell my children and grandchildren, whether or not they would be interested. I also wanted to uncover the truth behind many family stories handed down over the years.

After a fair bit of research I invested in Brother's Keeper, an excellent genealogy program. It is very comprehensive and because it was designed and produced by a person not a company the support is superb. From memory it cost me about $25 quite some years ago.

There are freebie personal ancestry programs around, some good, some less than good. I feel the problem with freebies is that because they are free you can't expect much by way of swift help and support if you have a problem.

I keep my BK on a PC, with constantly updated back-ups on an external hard drive and a flash drive. In case of fire the flash drive is next in line to the family cat, followed by the family!
I would never put my tree, the result of over 15 years 'work' and considerable outlay on certs, into the public domain. Did it once in the early years, when I was more trusting and less experienced in the ways of the unscrupulous, one of whom 'lifted' an entire branch of my tree and nailed it to their own without so much as a nod in my direction. Turned out he based his 'lift' on a wrong date and mispelled name and removed the branch after I had informed him of the error. But I didn't get an apology.

And remember, once you put your tree on a site in the public domain such as on Ancestry, whether public or private, it becomes part of their assets to do what they like with. You sign away your rights when you post the tree.

As to extras to Brother's Keeper, I keep a hard-back ring binder for all my BMD certs, each one in a plastic sleeve and indexed. I also keep another binder with downloaded census summary pages, grouped into families and also indexed. Then there's the filing cabinet for all the other paperwork collected and collated over the years!
Oh! And nearly forgot the photographs....

dickiesam wrote:a hard-back ring binder for all my BMD certs, each one in a plastic sleeve and indexed.

Don't forget that if you expect them to last for years you need acid-free sleeves not ordinary plastic. Watch out at genealogy fairs, at the Southport one recently I bought 20 A4 sleeves for £1.

MaryA wrote:

dickiesam wrote:a hard-back ring binder for all my BMD certs, each one in a plastic sleeve and indexed.

Don't forget that if you expect them to last for years you need acid-free sleeves not ordinary plastic. Watch out at genealogy fairs, at the Southport one recently I bought 20 A4 sleeves for £1.

Thanks for the reminder MaryA. Should have included that proviso.

So, writing everything on the back of a Woodbine packet is not acceptable then.

Depends on whether you can manage to split the paper and draw your tree on the reverse.

That's a decent price, Mary. I need to keep replacing mine.

Have had a gander at the BK page, DS - seems quite useful. Will download the free version and see what it's all about. Still seems quite cheap compared to other software I've seen.

Like you, DS, I don't want to put my work in the public domain. It's cost me a fortune in certificates, documents - diesel - taking photographs, not to mention the hours spent in far-flung libraries and archives whizzing through microfilm and reading dusty tomes, just to get that important tiny line that breaks down the brick wall after so long - a name, a place, a date. Then to have it pinched by someone sitting in front of their telly with the laptop one evening... gutting.

I need to re-organise my ring binders. Mine are in family order - it makes better sense to have certificates and census sheets by themselves.

Bert, mine is on beer mats - does that not count? Now you tell me!

Thank goodness to find out that I am in the company of like minded souls.

Thought the world had gone technology mad and that everything was 'out there' on the internet!

Glad to know that 'ring binders' and 'box files' still form a large part of other people's family history.

You can't beat a paper record!

like Dickie I keep hard copies of certificates, censuses and photo's in binders protected by acid free sleeves. I kee these in a rolling tote box by the front door. then I have my external hard drive with everything scanned down to it. I also keep a copy of my gen program on it. one thing I also keep on my external drive is copie of the notes about different people I have found but have no connection to a line yet. In the event of a tornado it's laptop, external drive and tote into the van followed by food and clothes.

I have several systems of record keeping. From the beginning of my research Family Tree Maker program was bought and as it did everything I wanted it to I kept on with this. The first one FTM 3 there was no problem with privacy because the Internet was unheard of. I use FTM now without connecting it to the internet & Ancestry and as far as I am aware it is safely kept private and away from anyones else's eyes! Using FTM gives you several options of printing out trees and Family Group Sheets which are then printed out in placed into ringbinder folders - separate folders for separate branches, then depending on how big those families get - divided again!! In those folders go anything else printed off the internet - census, copy certificates, scanned images of photos etc. I now have 7 large A4 ringbinders and the families are still growing!!
Also the FTM files are downloaded onto flash drives as well as the downloaded images from the ancestry etc which kind of wander around with me at all time

Original certificates and other documents have been put into a certificate folder which I bought from one of the companies (not sure which one, now!) but the main one I have used recently is My History based in Doncaster. They also sell some wonderful photograph wallets - A4 sheets divided into different sized pockets for you to slide your photos into and then place the sheets into a ringbinder folder. Which you can buy quite "posh" ones from My History as well.

If you don't want to use a program you can probably make up a family group sheet using Word, also Ancestry have downloadable charts, A4 pedigree chart, family group sheet and census charts which you can fill in and put in a folder.

When I first started and again Laptops weren't "invented" or even thought of being taken into a Record Office I wrote my family information in a notebook in a family group sheet style and that was all handwritten, my trees I also bought ready printed and filled them in by hand.

Sorry this maybe slightly long winded but have just done this topic as a talk for Southport Group
If you want to know more am happy to chat at our help desks either at Birkdale Library every Monday morning 10-12 noon or at Crosby 19th Apr but I won't be there till 3rd May. That's if you're local and not working of course!!

As I said in my talk it's kind of a personal choice as to whatever works for you, as long as you know where everything is but if you are leaving it to someone eventually they need to look at your work and be able to understand it and what it means, so separate files for each family, trees to explain and show familial relationships and everything for one family in one file.

Hope this has helped in some way!

I believe your talk went down very well, hope it was well attended too.

Hi Mary
no it wasn't we had very few people there that afternoon, but the ones that were there said they got something out of it which was good! They especially like the photograph sheets that are sold by My History - they maybe getting a few orders

Kathy, I saw your reminder on Facebook and would have loved to have attended! - sadly it's too far for me. I'm sure it would have been very useful.

if you are leaving it to someone eventually they need to look at your work and be able to understand it and what it means

Exactly.

Some people are well-organised by nature; I'm not, unfortunately.

Some very helpful pointers there, thank you.

Hiya
You're welcome Glad you may have got something out of it!

A catalogue from My History dropped through my door, coincidentally, this morning - along with a couple of stationery bits from eBay. I didn't realise they were sellers on there - but, oh!! - so many nice things. And useful things. Like a kid in a sweet shop, I was, with only tuppence to spend.

As regards software, I realised that nothing seemed to fit my requirements exactly, but for security's sake I went with Brother's Keeper. Of course, the beauty of FTM is that you can just sync the whole lot but I'm getting to grips with the software and I am reassured that it is all offline now. Just got to remember to back-up regularly.

Just got to remember to back-up regularly

I backup onto my dedicated family history flash drive every time I make a change to my databases, no matter how small. And a small capacity drive will do. I use a 64 Mb to hold 5 different family databases. Once a month I include my Brothers Keeper in a backup of all data files onto an external HD.

Flashdrives have become so economical for large sizes too now, that I have additional back up cover on one of those, plenty of room for even those thousands of census images.