Alan E. Mann,
A.G.
byu@alanmann.com Accredited
Genealogist
www.alanmann.com/articles/publish.htm July 2003
Publish Your Genealogy Easily
Webster’s defines publish
as to make generally known, to make public announcement of, to disseminate to
the public, or to produce or release for distribution. To publish one’s
genealogy, then is to make your family history generally known or produce it
for distribution. This can be done in different media (printed book, CD-ROM,
DVD, or web site), in different styles or layouts (formats), using different
methods of preparation. There are so many options that we could spend a whole
hour just listing all the different ways to publish. Let me define a starting
point and then move on. In my opinion, the easiest way to publish is to gather
your genealogy into a computer program and then use it to create your
publication. You may then need to make a few changes before you actually
release the publication.
For this session, I
will assume that a person wishing to publish has already done the hard part,
namely:
1.
Research
and document your pedigree. Until you have something to share, there isn’t much
point to publishing. Along the way, use proper research procedures and fully
document everything you find or don’t find (that’s right, not finding something
in a source needs to be recorded).
2.
Enter
your data into a database (including sources!). Pick a program that meets your
needs (I recommend Legacy, PAF 5, FamilyTreeLegends, RootsMagic, or The Master
Genealogist). Part of the process of selecting a genealogy program MAY be how
good a job it does at publishing, but you may want to use a different program
to record and store your data than the one you use to publish it. Include
histories and historical facts in what you gather. This will make your
publication more interesting.
These two steps are, of course, 99%
of the work of publishing your genealogy. I caution you, however, not to wait
until everything is “done” before publishing. If you do that, you may never
publish.
Preparing to Publish
Prior to publication, you need to
address the issues of privacy, copyright, medium, and format.
Privacy
would normally restrict what you publish to information strictly about dead
relatives. Anything you publish about a living person could be construed as a
violation of privacy. Legal advice would be not to publish anything about a
living person (even their name) without their written permission. Often,
however, the whole purpose of publishing is to allow your relatives to “see
their name” in your publication. There are several privacy alternatives to
consider:
- Get permission to include details from each and
every living person whose name will appear in your publication
- Publish only the names of those still living so
that their names can still appear in print, but remove any details such as
birth, marriage, residence, or personal history.
- Same as the preceding option, but use initials
only for first and middle names.
- Go ahead and publish everything. After all,
everyone in the database is a relative and a relative wouldn’t sue you,
would they? (said sarcastically)
Copyright protects
anything created since 1923. A photograph copyright is owned by the person who
pushed the button on the camera. Even an email is copyrighted. If you copy a
poem someone emails you and send it to others, you have probably violated their
copyright. It doesn’t have to be registered with a government office or have a
copyright notice. The minute it is written (typed, input, created…), it is
owned by the person who created it. Just because a picture is in a book or on a
web page, or posted on a bulletin board at school, it is not “public domain.”
You need the copyright holder’s permission to publish it. You should request
permission of the copyright holder and keep a record of receiving that
permission. For more information about privacy and copyright, please see www.geocities.com/UGAslig/PreparetoPublish.htm.
Now you need to think about medium. Do you want a printed book,
CD-ROM, or web page. This depends on the audience you want to reach, your
purpose in publishing, the budget for your publication, and the degree of
finality to your publication. Lets talk about each of these.
Audience – a
web page can reach a great number of people, but not everyone has a computer or
access to the Internet. On the other hand, everyone in the “civilized” world
has access to the Internet at a school, library, or somewhere if not the home.
If you don’t want everyone in the world to have it, but just selected
relatives, then a CD-ROM or printed book may be better.
Purpose –
why are you publishing? Do you want to get the information out there so your
relatives will stop asking you for copies of their genealogy? Are you trying to
make money (not likely)? Are you hoping some relatives you don’t know will see
and contact you with information about their branch of the family? If you want
unknown relatives to have a chance at finding it, the Internet is the only way
to go. If you don’t want other copying your data, a printed book may be your
best alternative.
Budget -- The disadvantage of a printed book
is the cost. If you want a reasonable printing run, the cost will be well over
$5000. It is not unusual for a lengthy family history to cost $50,000 to
publish. A CD-ROM has some aspects of control and limited distribution without
the price tag. A web site can actually be free or cost such an insignificant
amount as to be practically free.
Finality –
Is what you are publishing thoroughly documented and incontrovertibly final? Or
is this the best you got and you want to get it out there so relatives can give
you corrections and additions? My recommendation is that you create a web page
with at least the names, dates, and places even if your final goal is to
publish a printed book. The web page becomes an excellent way to get input,
proofreading, and other contributions from relatives—both known and unknown. If
you want to save the documents, photos, sources, stories, and histories for the
final book, still put out the genealogical facts on the web.
Conclusion --
If your purpose and intended audience don’t rule out a web page, it is probably
the best way to go.
.
The next step is to
decide on format. Is your
publication going to be about yourself and all your ancestors? (an ambitious
project). Is it going to be about you 7th great grandfather and all
his descendants? Is it going to be about your grandmother and all her
ancestors? A focus is needed and should be influenced by intended audience. If
you want to sell this at the Smith family reunion and the book is about all
YOUR ancestors (only ¼ of which was the Smith line), 75% of your book would be
about that aren’t even connected to the Smiths. Is your book going to be just
pedigree charts? Pedigree charts and Group Sheets? Is it going to be a
narrative? Will it be a narrative with
or without charts and group sheets? Do you want to include photographs? Will
the photographs be in an appendix marked “album” or intermingled with the
narrative and/or charts?
Publishing
The easiest way to
publish is to let a genealogy program create your publication. Check out the
various programs, how they publish, and what the results look like. Then pick what
you want. You may want to consider using more than one program to publish. You
may also choose to use a different program to publish than you normally use for
data input and storage.
Usually, this
involves little more than clicking on a button in your genealogy program,
making a few choices about formats and options, then letting the program do the
work. Most genealogy programs that publish give you the option of creating in a
format that can then be edited in a word processing program like Word or Word
Perfect. This means you can fine tune your publication to exactly what you
want.
Note that there are
programs that keep track of your genealogy and also publish, and there are
programs that do nothing but publish. The latter type of program takes your
data created in your genealogy program and creates a publication for you.
Sometimes this latter type of program has a format or style that you may find
more desirable.
One approach is to
publish about your four grandparents with their ancestors in narrative format,
then create a “table of contents” web page to describe the four publications.
This is the approach I took for my publication as web pages, as you can see at www.geocities.com/Heartland/Farm/6266/. You may choose to also have pedigree charts
and/or family group sheets that could be created by a different program.
Choosing
a program to help you create web pages
What is the best way
to create family tree web pages? Which program is the best?
Simply, the best
program is the one that best suits your needs or most appeals to you. There is
no one BEST program for everyone. Look at the web pages produced by various
programs and decide which program appeals to you the most. After all, your goal
is to have other genealogists easily find your families to determine if they
match any of theirs. Make sure the program you choose will list dates and
location, otherwise it may be difficult for a visitor to determine if he is
interested in your surnames.
Consider these
questions:
What do the web pages
look like?
Which is the easiest
for a visitor to my web page to navigate?
Does it create an
index page?
Are the web pages
created searchable (only one is, as far as I know)?
Is it easy to
navigate from page to page?
Are there any delays
in navigating from page to page (is it slow)?
How complicated is it
to use?
Can I edit (enhance)
the resulting pages (pretty backgrounds, etc.)?
What enhancement
options are included in the program?
Are notes included in
the page (embedded), referenced in the page, or do I have options?
Are sources included
in the page, footnoted, or what?
Can it be
automatically added to large indexes (such as gendex)?
Where are the web
pages created (my hard drive, or directly to a web site?)
Once on my hard
drive, how hard is it to transfer the web pages to the Internet (upload)?
How much does it
cost?
What report formats
do I have to choose from (many are only one)?
What options are
there for handling data on living people ?
what information is suppressed?
(name/dates/notes...)
How does it determine who is living?
Can I set the threshold for what is
living and what isn’t?
To help you find the
program that will create pages that you feel will best present your data, take
a look at the following pages, the first of which shows examples of web pages
created from various programs and tells you how to get the programs:
http://help.surnameweb.org/tutorial/gedcom.html
http://www.cagenweb.com/rwilson/compare.htm
For more information
on how to create web pages, the choices involved, and how to improve them once
created, please refer to:
Cyndi Howell’s web
page construction kit (www.cyndislist.com/construc.htm)
Surnameweb’s
Genealogy Home Page tutorial (http://help.surnameweb.org/)
Richard Wilson’s book
Publishing Your Family History on the
Internet
Sharing Your Data
Made Easy: Internet at http://www.alanmann.com/publish.htm
©Copyright 1997-2003 by Alan E.
Mann. All rights reserved. Written permission to reproduce all or part of this
syllabus material in any format, including photocopying, data retrieval or the
Internet, must be secured in advance from the copyright holder.