PRESENTING AND PRESERVING YOUR FAMILY HISTORY:
YOU CAN'T TAKE IT WITH YOU, SO HOW DO YOU LEAVE IT?
©2020 Donald R. Snow - Last updated 2020-06-08.
Go to the Utah Valley Technology and
Genealogy Group Home Page or Don's
Class Listings Page .
ABSTRACT: Presenting, as well as 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
- Instructor is Donald R. Snow (snowd@math.byu.edu)
of Provo and St. George, Utah.
- These notes with active internet links and related articles
are posted on http://uvtagg.org/classes/dons/dons-classes.html
.
- Tips: (1) To put an icon on your desktop for
these notes, or any webpage, just drag the icon from in front
of the address in your browser onto your desktop.
(2) To open a link, but keep your place in these notes,
hold down the Control (CTRL) key while clicking the link.
- The problem for today: Presenting and preserving your genealogy
are closely related. The idea is to work so you, or your
descendants later, can pick up where you left off.
Examples and details will be in Powerpoints, demos, and
videos.
BEING ORGANIZED
- Obviously, the very best way to present and leave your
information is to have it all organized into a computer
genealogy database, distribute copies to other people,
print out multiple copies on acid-free paper, write books
and articles about it all, citing all the sources and
giving all the stories and photos, make videos to show
your family, and put all the information for deceased
individuals in an online database such as FamilySearch
Family Tree. But who will take the time do
all that?
- Being organized yourself as you work makes it easier for
you to pick up where you left off and for others to see what you have done.
- Home database and collaboration
- Use a computerized genealogy program on your home
computer with all the data for living and dead; set the program to keep track of changes and when you made them
- Use an online collaboration with your family or others, so they can access your data.
- Use research logs of some kind, so you and others can
tell what you looked at and found and what else you intend to look at.
- Digitize all your documents, pictures, slides, and
artifacts, and label them so they are findable with what they are.
- Include stories, photos, research logs, and links for
information in your computer database.
- Make slideshow videos of some of the pictures so they
can be viewed easily -- People will look at short
videos, but won't take time to go through lots of photos
- Be sure someone knows where to find your
passwords.
- Online database, e.g. FamilySearch Family Tree
- Store your proven genealogy in an online website like
FamilySearch Family Tree with the documentation,
sources, photos, and stories. Anyone, Church member or not, can sign up for a free account and this gives them a Private Space, as well as access to the Public Space.
- Upload as much into your Private Space in Family Tree about living people as you feel comfortable with; any time you enter data on someone born less than 110 years ago and with no death date, it goes into your Private Space automatically and only you can see it; as soon as you enter a death date for them, they are automatically moved to the Public Space and everyone can then see their data; they will then need to be combined with other copies of their records in the Public Space
See more information on the FamilySearch Blog
-- https://familysearch.org/blog/en/
- Gary Wright's series "Preserving Your Family History
Records Digitally"
- https://familysearch.org/blog/en/preserving-family-history-records-digitallypart-1/
- https://familysearch.org/blog/en/preserving-family-history-records-digitallypart-2/
- https://familysearch.org/blog/en/preserving-family-history-records-digitallypart-3/
- To find additional information search the blog for
words like "preservation", "digital", "format", etc.
BACKUPS, STORAGE, AND ONLINE COLLABORATION
- Have backups, backups, backups! Keep at
least two generations of previous backups and delete older backups later. Have backups stored
online or somewhere other than just in your home to avoid
losing it all in a computer crash or other disaster.
- To help find and sort files, include the date in International Date Format after the
name; for example, [file name]-YYYY-MM-DD.[ext]; this date format (year-month-day), makes them sort chronologically with the latest at the bottom, so it's easy to find.
- DROPBOX -- https://www.dropbox.com/
-- can store backups of your database; you get
2 gigs of free space to store any files you want; you also can designate access to others and can get to it from anywhere; the main problem here is that when two
people inadvertently work on the database at the same time and then save it, only the latest one is saved and you don't know that the other one has been lost; GOOGLE DRIVE (15 gigs free) has same problem -- https://www.google.com
- ANCESTRAL QUEST -- http://www.ancquest.com/index.htm
-- has a very helpful free feature that you and others you designate can collaborate on the same database, but only one can work on it at a time, so you don't have the Dropbox problem; you can also backup your latest AQ database to your own computer and view it without being online, but you can't change it when not online
- EVERNOTE -- http://www.evernote.com
-- free program with commercial versions having
more features
- Notes are saved in notebooks of two types: (1) Sychronized notesbooks (available to you anywhere over the internet) and (2) Local notebooks (only available to you on your own computer
- EVERNOTE is available for all types of devices, e.g. Windows, Mac,
smartphones, tablets, etc.; free program can be installed on any two devices, e.g. your computer and smartphone, but you can use the web version in a broswser on your other devices
- Great place to save info, notes, links,
webpages, research logs, data, and, if your
device has a camera, it can be used as a scanner and will "square up" rectangular documents
- Can share a note or entire notebook with
whoever you want
- Can use a local notebook (saved only on your
own computer) to store your passwords and
private data (medical, financial, etc.); safer since this doesn't go over the
internet; can backup lthese by copying to flash drives and/or transferring to other computers
DIGITIZING AND LABELING DOCUMENTS TO SORT CHRONOLOGICALLY
- New scanners scan directly to flash drives without using a computer; many FHCs have these
- Scan documents at 150-300 dpi -- Library of Congress Rule of Thumb is scan at 250 dpi for each inch of final size
- Scan portraits to flash drive as tif's at 600
dpi
- Scanner automatically names files sequentially
as Scanned-image-1.pdf, Scanned -image-15.tif,
Scanned-image-7.jpg, etc.
- Use freeware program like BULK RENAME UTILITY -- http://www.bulkrenameutility.co.uk/
-- to change all file names from
"Scanned-image-##.[ext]" to
"--Scanned-YYYY-MM-DD--##.[ext]" -- date is
written in International Date Format YYYY-MM-DD
(largest-to-smallest, year-month,day) so alphabetizing sorts them chronologically
- Use EVERYTHING (free from https://voidtools.com ) or FILE EXPLORER -- both have Preview Panels to allow seeing what's in the file without opening it, but allowing you to rename it
- FILE NAME EXAMPLE 1: SnowEldonStafford(1891-1954)-1913-00-00-SCHOOL-DixieCollegeTranscript-1913-Color--Scanned-2013-04-03--22.pdf
- FILE NAME EXAMPLE 2:
ManwaringDiane(Snow)(1934-2012)-2012-10-10-DEATH-CERTIFICATE-UtahDeathCertificate--Scanned-2012-11-03--34.pdf
- Name first, followed by event date in
International Date Format makes them sort in order from anywhere
on your computer by using EVERYTHING
- Including search keywords such as SCHOOL,
MARRIAGE, DEATH, or MILITARY, allows finding and showing all of thoe files for the person in chronological order
- For documents applying to entire life of
the person, can put keywords such as HISTORY, PEDIGREE, BIOGRAPHY, or
GENEALOGY before the event date so they sort
with the person, but after all the event-dated items
- For photos that are not portraits I use a difyrent
system, since there are usually so many
- To store the hard copy documents I put
them in physical file folders named "Scanned
YYYY-MM-DD", so I can find the originals by their scanned dates and I know which are already scanned
- The freeware program EVERYTHING can be
used to edit file names, find, run, move, copy, rename, or
delete files from anywhere on your computer -- to move
files to a single folder, highlight them in EVERYTHING
and drag-drop them to the folder
- Files named with my system all sort in chronological
order without EVERYTHING when all in a single
folder
- More details about all of this is in
other articles and notes on my website
PHOTOS, SLIDES, AND SLIDESHOWS OF YOUR PHOTOS
- Download and store photos from digital camera
in folders by year
- My naming system for digital and digitized photos and slides is different from my system for documents -- has date in front
- Use freeware program NAMEXIF -- http://www.digicamsoft.com/softnamexif.html
-- to extract date and time from metadata in each
photo and put it at start of file name in
International Date Format; this makes photos sort
chronologically so photos of same event are sorted
together -- requires that you keep the date and
time set correctly on your camera
- Add other descriptive and keywords in title after
date -- this is what takes the most time
- Freeware program EVERYTHING finds all
photos for any date, event, location,
persons, or keywords in title on your
computer in any folder; they are sorted
by date, if you have put the date in
International Date Format in front, even
if you haven't taken time to enter other
keywords
- For photos and slides that you scan
(not from your camera) they only have date
scanned in their metadata, so you have to
estimate the date to put in front
- 35 mm slides -- scan these yourself or
have them done professionally; use 2000-4000
dpi resolution for archiving
- Small Wolverine slide scanner (about
$100 from Costco Online); scans slides and negatives at 4064
dpi; fast (about 3 seconds per slide), but
is labor-intensive since you have to feed the slides or negatives in
by hand; could hire a grand child to scan them
for you
- For photographs some FHCs have new
Kodak Photo Scanners for photos up to 8 1/2 inches wide, scans both sides
at once in various resolutions and
formats; very fast and easy to use; I
recommend saving archive copies of photos as 600
dpi tif's; tif format is loseless,
unlike jpg; can archive jpg's, if you don't edit the originals, just copiy the original and edit that
- Many free programs to help organize and
generate slideshows of your photos
- GOOGLE PHOTOS -- free and helpful for storing photos
- PICASA -- still free and available, but not from Google, and not being updated
- PHOTO GALLERY -- free from Microsoft --
may already be on your computer since it
is in Windows
- Both PICASA and PHOTO GALLERY do
editing, slideshows, and facial
recognition to help you organize your
photos, but their labels are only
in that program and not in the metadata,
so they don't transfer when you copy the photos; PICASA has a way of saving some
labels to the metadata
- EVERYTHING and FILE EXPLORER help for photo naming
with the preview panel opened; can make the
preview window larger by dragging the border to widen it; can see the picture without having to open it, so you can rename it easily
- PHOTO FILMSTRIP -- freeware program to
make "Ken Burns"-type videos of your photos
-- https://www.photofilmstrip.org/en/ -- shows apparent motion in the still picture; also allows
captions and music or narration; helps hold
people's interest
- Can upload your photos of people to FamilySearch Family
Tree to preserve and share
- Helpful information about scanning
resolution at
http://www.digitalmemoriesonline.net/scan/scan_processing/resolving_scanning_resolution.htm
and the National Archives Recommendations
at http://www.archives.gov/preservation/technical/guidelines.pdf
-- recommendation is to scan so final result
has 250 dpi (dots per inch) for each inch
you want to print; hence, from a one-inch photo or slide, to make a 10-inch print you need at least 10 x 250 dpi = 2500 dpi
SOUND RECORDINGS, MOVIES, AND VIDEOS
- Digitize old analog sound recordings, such as tapes, as soon as possible since they deteriorate and so they can be stored, edited, shared, and uploaded
- Transcribing digitized sound recordings -- use
freeware LISTEN N WRITE -- http://listen-n-write.en.lo4d.com
-- which has keyboard shortcuts to
start and stop the sound recording and a
panel in which to type what you hear; can also type what you hear into any other text editor, e.g. LibreOffice or Word; more details in other notes and articles on my webpage; smartphones have a transcribe option, but it may require too much editing later
- 8mm movies -- new commercial transfers of these take out the flicker and are worth paying for
- VHS (video) tapes -- can transfer to
DVDs yourself or have it done
commercially which usually gives better quality, but is expensive
- After converting movies and VHSs to DVDs, they can be edited and converted to other formats, if needed; two helpful freeware conversion programs are Handbrake -- http://handbrake.fr
-- and -- Format Factory -- https://formatfactory.en.uptodown.com/windows
- Can extract parts of DVDs with freeware programs and form videos of a single individual, for example
CONCLUSIONS
- This has been loaded with information and most of these topics can and have been expanded into full classes. See class notes and articles on my webpage https://uvtagg.org/classes/dons/dons-classes.html .
- Hopefully, this has given you some ideas to present
and preserve your family history so, it will last longer than you do.
Go to the Utah Valley Technology
and Genealogy Group Home Page or Don's
Class Listings Page .