How to Digitize Your Family History
You have finished an aspect or a specific branch of your family tree and now you wish to share it with family members and fellow researchers. Printed books are still coveted but they are expensive to publish. Digitizing your family history however can not only help preserve your findings, but is also an inexpensive way to share your findings with other family members. Whether you choose a website or blog approach or you burn CDs, it is still cheaper than copying everything.
Instructions
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Burn a CD or DVD
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Digitizing your family history is an inexpensive way to share your findings. Purchase writeable CDs or DVDs. Insert the disk into your computer. A text bog will appear.
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Click "Burn files to data disk." Name your disk in the pop up box.
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Click "Show formatting options". Click "Mastered." Click "Next." An empty disc folder will open.
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Open the folder on your computer that contains the files to be copied. Drag those files into the empty disc folder. You can also highlight them, copy and paste them if you wish to retain the original files on your system.
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Click "Burn to disk" from your toolbar. The files will now copy over and your disk will be burned or created. When the burn is complete, the disk tray will open and the disk can be removed.
Create a Website
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Define a purpose for your website. Determine if the focus will be on a specific ancestor and his or her descendants or if the purpose will be broader such as to cover a specific surname. Your intended audience - family or extended family or simply fellow researchers - will also help dictate your purpose.
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Plan your content. Being a genealogy website, your site will be more data driven than image and sounds. Layout your site now, in the planning stage, rather than as you go. This will save you countless headaches. Think about how you already have your hard copies organize and mirror it.
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Develop the site. This is the stage in which you actually design your site. You can use a template or design it yourself using any web-authoring program.
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Find a host for your site. Some sites, such as Rootsweb, offer free space with certain conditions. Other hosts offer you space to do with as you wish, within legal limits. These latter sites are generally paid hosts. If you find a site is too much maintenance, try blogging. Blogger.com offers free blog space. A blog is more akin to an online journal; whereas, a website it more like an electronic filing cabinet.
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Maintain your site. Keep it fresh. Add new information on a regular basis. If you announce on your site that you will update weekly, then be sure to update every week or you may loose followers.
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Tips & Warnings
If you burn a disk that is already Mastered, you will need enough free space on your hard drive equal to the capacity of the Mastered disk. A typical CD is approximately 650 MB.
To make more than one copy - such as to give out to various family members - copy all the files to a temporary folder and select those files repeatedly for each disc.
Offer interaction. A website - or a blog - can offer interaction between family members or between fellow genealogists. People will, in time, begin to share information and connect ancestors.
References
- Photo Credit family tree image by Judy Ben Joud from Fotolia.com cd-r image by matteo NATALE from Fotolia.com
