SUMMARY:  PRESENTING AND PRESERVING YOUR FAMILY HISTORY: YOU CAN'T TAKE IT WITH YOU, SO HOW DO YOU LEAVE IT?

©2017 by Donald R. Snow - Page was last updated 2017-02-04.

Go to the Utah Valley Technology and Genealogy Group Home Page or Don's Class Listings Page .
This is a 2-page Summary of the full 4-page notes.  The numbering is the same as on the full note so some numbers are skipped here.

ABSTRACT:  Presenting and preserving your family history are closely related and doing one helps with the other.  This class will discuss ideas and freeware programs to help with both of these, including scanning and file naming, finding it on your computer, storing and showing the data, backing it up, collaborating with others, and having your data so you and others can see later what you have done.  The goal is to have your family history organized, presentable, and in a format that will last longer than you do.  The notes with active links and related articles are on http://uvtagg.org/classes/dons/dons-classes.html .

WELCOME AND INTRODUCTION

1.  Instructors are Donald R. Snow (snowd@math.byu.edu) of Provo and St. George, Utah and Linda Snow Westover (linda.westover@gmail.com) of Orem, Utah.
2.  These notes with active Internet links and related articles are posted on http://uvtagg.org/classes/dons/dons-classes.html .
4.  The problem:  Presenting and preserving your genealogy are closely related; the idea is to work so you, or your descendants, can pick up where you left off.  Examples and details will be in PowerPoints, demos, and videos.

BEING ORGANIZED

5.  Best way - write it all out with sources, photos, scans, etc., send copies everywhere, and put it in FamilySearch -- but who does all that???
7.  Organizational ideas to consider -- genealogy database at home and also FamilySearch Family Tree; importance of collaboration; research logs; digitize everything; make video slideshows; be sure your kids know where to find your passwords 

BACKUPS, STORAGE, AND ONLINE COLLABORATION

9.  Have backups, backups, backups!  At least two-generations of backups, not all at your home
10.  Include the date after the name, e.g. [file name]-YYYY-MM-DD.[ext], so they sort in chronological order -- YYYY-MM-DD is International Date Format
11.  Store your proven genealogy on a permanent website; keep private items at home in your own database
12.  DROPBOX -- https://www.dropbox.com/ -- very helpful and 2 gigs of space free; GOOGLE DRIVE 15 gigs free -- https://www.google.com 
13.  ANCESTRAL QUEST -- http://www.ancquest.com/index.htm -- very helpful free Collaboration feature; avoids problem of two people working on same database at same time inadvertently, so not all changes get saved
14.  EVERNOTE -- http://www.evernote.com -- free and commercial versions, very helpful for family history -- two kinds of notebooks; local notebook is good place for passwords and private info

DIGITIZING AND LABELING DOCUMENTS SO SORT IS CHRONOLOGICAL

15.  Scan directly to flash drive with new scanners, e.g. Lexmarks at FHCs
16.  Labeling scans so findable and sort chronologically -- examples: 
              StaffordAnn(Snow)(Condie)(1867-1948)-1948-05-04-Death-UtahOnlineDeathCertificates--Screenshot-2013-10-09.jpg  and 
              ManwaringDiane(Snow)(1934-2012)-2012-10-10-Death-UtahDeathCertificate--Scanned-2012-11-03--34.pdf
              Include key words so searchable -- Birth, Death, Marriage, School, Military, Medical, LDS, History, News, History, Genealogy, etc.
17.  More details about this method are in Freeware Corner notes on my website -- see  http://uvtagg.org/classes/dons/dons-freewarecorner-2014-06.html;
freeware program EVERYTHING -- http://voidtools.com/ -- allows finding all files for that person, regardless of location on your computer, and shows them in chronological order to form an interactive timeline of their life; more details about photos in other sets of my class notes

SOUND RECORDINGS, MOVIES, AND VIDEOS

19.  Transcribing sound -- freeware LISTEN N WRITE -- http://listen-n-write.en.lo4d.com -- details in my notes on audio transcription at http://uvtagg.org/classes/dons/dons-classes.html
20.  8 mm movies -- have them transferred to DVDs commercially, expensive, but new equipment leaves out "flicker" that we used to see
21.  VHS video tapes -- devices to digitize them yourself; commercial is better, but expensive 
22.  Conversion programs after digitization so you can edit them -- http://handbrake.fr -- and Format Factory -- http://filehippo.com/download_format_factory
23.  Extract parts of videos to form videos by subject, e.g. to form a video about individuals

SLIDES, PHOTOS, AND SLIDESHOWS OF YOUR PHOTOS

24.  35 mm slides -- scan these yourself or have them done professionally, use 2000-4000 dpi (dpi - dots per inch for printers; ppi = pixels per inch) for screens 
25.  Wolverine slide scanner (small, about $100); scans slides and negatives at 4064 dpi; fast (about 3 seconds per slide), but labor-intensive since you have to feed the slides or negatives in by hand -- available from Costco Online; could hire a grand child to scan them for you
26.  Kodak Photo Scanners in some FHCs -- will scan high res, both sides at once, and up to 8 1/2 inches wide, fast, and easy to use  27.  My photo naming system -- different than my system for documents -- examples
          PHT-2007-10-13-10h05m18s-SharonHintzeAtFRC-01-IMG_0603.JPG
Freeware program NAMEXIF -- http://www.digicamsoft.com/softnamexif.html -- puts exact date and time from metadata to front of file name -- makes all photos sort chronologically -- details in notes and articles
28.  Many free programs to help organize and generate slideshows of your photos; both these do editing and facial recognition
         PICASA -- still available and free, but no longer updated from Google
         PHOTO GALLERY -- free from Microsoft
         FILE EXPLORER -- helpful for photo naming with the Preview Panel open so you don't have to open file in another program; click on View > Preview Panel
29.  Can upload your photos of people to Family Tree to preserve and share them
30.  Helpful information about scanning resolution on websites in notes -- recommendation is to scan so final result has 250 dpi (dots per inch) for each inch you want to print
31.  PHOTO FILMSTRIP -- freeware program to make videos of your photos -- http://www.photofilmstrip.org/1-1-Home.html -- "Ken Burns"-type videos with apparent motion form stills; allows captions and music or narration; helps hold people's interest

CONCLUSIONS

32.  This just scratches the surface, but we hope you got ideas to help make your information last longer than you do.