After all of your efforts at gathering and organizing your family history information, you need some means of sharing it with others. This sharing serves several purposes:
others see what you have learned
others have an opportunity to correct or add to what you have gathered
seeing something in front of them often triggers others to contact you about the family
the information is disseminated for future generations to review
There are many ways to distribute your family history. Some of these ways include:
letters
newsletter
pedigrees and other charts
family group sheets
chronologies
web site of your family
full write-up on selected families
full write-up on entire family branches
Publishing a Book on Your Family History
Many genealogical software products have a book publishing feature. Some include options for publishing your information for a web site. You can also use a word processor or other desktop publishing software to create your family information in whatever layout you desire.
Beyond the genealogical data per person, consider including the following information in your publication:
table of contents
last name index with married women both by maiden name and married name(s)
index of all persons by first names
index of persons by geographical places
maps
pedigrees
ahnentafel chart
photographs
bibliography
full citations of where all of your information can be found
statistics by family (e.g. ages, marriages, children, generational info, average death age, etc.)
lists of persons per cemetery, school, military service, religion, occupation
descendancy lists
Consider which repositories in which to deposit a copy of your publication. These repositories might include:
Library of Congress
LDS Church (they will ask your permission to microfilm your book)
some of the top genealogical libraries (see a separate list in this document)
national genealogical societies including DAR and SAR
libraries and/or genealogical/historical societies for the area where your relatives lived
When seriously considering publishing your family history in book form, and you want professional help, you should consider contacting a publisher BEFORE you begin writing the book. Publishers will offer advice and tips plus steer you around problems. Their advice may prevent you from re-doing work later.
Selected U.S. publishers specializing in genealogical books:
There are many advantages, and disadvantages, to publishing your family history information on the world wide web. Some advantages include:
usually cheaper that having a book published in printed form
easier to change the web information as opposed to the printed form
the look and feel of the web pages can easily be changed
can use links to navigate from any given name/word to some related information
no mailing costs involved, and anyone anywhere in the world can access it (using a computer, of course)
the text can be searched, thus, no need to produce an index
On the flip side, the disadvantages of publishing the family history on the web include:
if information about living persons is included, it can be accessed by identity thieves
the web pages can be viewed only as long as someone continually pays for storing the web pages on a computer connected to the Internet
potential viewers of the family history must be using a computer that can connect to the web
the various browsers that people can potentially use, including separate versions of each of the browsers, makes it a challenge to know what to include and not include as far as advanced browser features
Before you begin building web pages, you need to:
Determine who is your intended audience
family members
other researchers
anyone
Set what information to include and what not to include
anything about persons currently living -- this is a very important decision
A good book to see for tips and specifics on how to put your family history on the web is Web Publishing for Genealogists, second edition by Peter Christian (2000, Genealogical Publishing Co. Inc., Baltimore, $11).