(Continued, Part 1)
As I had mentioned in part 1 of this series, the choice of which genealogy software to use is a very personal one. All of the major programs will, at a minimum, allow you to record your data, print charts and reports, and indicate the sources for your information. Additionally, they will allow you to attach or include photos to individuals and events, and may also allow the attachment of other types of files, i.e. sound files, word processing files, PDF files, etc.
I consider the ability to attach images to individuals of prime importance for any software program. By adding images of old photographs, scans of census pages, a picture of a gravestone, a sound file of a relative that has passed away, etc., you add immeasurably to the story of your ancestors. You bring to life the day-to-day lives of your family and dramatically increase the readability of your reports. Imagine how “dry” a pedigree chart would be without pictures of our ancestors next to each of their information boxes. The same thing is true for most other reports that you will be printing. Pictures of your grand-parents house when you list their residence(s) during their lifetime; an image of the census page on which you finally found them listed; a picture of their gravestone from that remote cemetery you visited. Pictures make the report easier on the eye and much easier to read and enjoy. Although some people may disagree, I try to add as many pictures as possible to my reports and web pages. I feel that the final product is much more enjoyable to read and keeps the readers interest.
One word of caution however – I know of at least one genealogy program (early versions of Family Tree Maker) that actually makes a copy of the image you have attached and imbeds the image in the database file itself. If you add a lot of pictures your database file can quickly grow enormous and become quite sluggish to load and work with. Most of the other programs simply put a link to the picture into the database file that points to the original image – this prevents the data file from growing large and unwieldy. So before you start adding hundreds of pictures to your family file, find out how the program you are using handles them. Obviously, the preferred method is the one that uses links, but if your program of choice actually imbeds the images into your database file just be sure to be judicious in how many images you add and try to keep them relatively small in file size.
While on the topic of pictures and images let me quickly give you one piece of advice concerning file formats. When most people deal with images on their computer, they use the very popular JPG format. While this format produces acceptable images that are relatively small in size it does have one major drawback – it is a “lossy” format. That means that as you open and resave the image, more and more detail is lost. The amount of loss varies and it only happens when you save the image after opening it. I will go into this problem in more detail later on in the series when I talk about photo editing programs, but for now let me recommend that you save your original images using a “lossless” format such as TIF or PNG, or if that is not feasible, only edit copies of your images and keep the original JPG images separate from the working copies.
Another aspect of collecting all of this information about our ancestors that most people forget is the importance of listing our sources. When most of us start getting interested in genealogy, we tend to simply collect names, dates, and places. It seems that the major objective for the beginner is to add as many names as possible to their family tree, in as little time as possible. We eventually get to the point when we realize that where we found the information is almost as important as what we found. Geoff Rasmussen, a spokesperson for Millennia Corporation (the makers of Legacy Family Tree genealogy software), has stated that “Genealogy without sources is mythology” – a very good description of what happens if we indiscriminately add names and dates to our data file. Adequately citing your sources has several benefits:
One last comment concerning sources and events or facts that you uncover about your ancestors. It may seem counter-intuitive at first, but I would strongly recommend that you keep track of not only the facts that you do find in your searching through a particular set of records but also what you do not find. In other words, if you are looking for your great-grandmother’s birth record in the “1880 NameThatPlace Parish Record Book” and do not find it – make a note that you searched that particular source unsuccessfully. This way, four or five years from now, you won’t spend time searching through the same records again because you forgot that you had previously!!
A question that comes up with some regularity on the genealogy message boards that I frequent is, “Should I keep just one family file or should I split it into two (or more) files – one for myself and one for my spouse?” My unqualified opinion is – keep only one file!! Keeping just one family file has several advantages, not the least of which is avoiding duplicate entries. Consider what would happen if you did try to work with two files – you (and your children), at a minimum, would have to be entered in both files. When you enter new information about yourself or your children you would have to update both files separately. As your children grow up, get married, and have children themselves, the problem gets worse and worse. The chances of forgetting to update multiple files become a very real possibility as time goes on. If you wanted to print reports with one of your children as the starting person you would run into problems getting both of their ancestral lines to be included properly. Besides, what is the use of using computers if we fail to take advantage of their power and speed in keeping track of information??
To summarize what has been discussed in this section:
October 8, 2008
Part 3: Sharing Your Family History on the Internet
Author: Bob Janice
Forum: If you have any questions you can ask me directly in the Forum.