Contact SCGS

P.O. Box 692
Ames, Iowa
50010

email:
storygenes@gmail.com

Book Reviews and More

Your Living Family Tree by Gordon Burgett, published by Communications Unlimited: Novato, CA.  www.livingfamilytree.com.   Available from Ames Public Library  See it at 929.1/BUR/2006.
                Reviewed by Marti Rasmussen
The idea of a Living Family Tree is an especially apt one for today’s generation of genealogists with all the online resources they have.  The idea is to build your Family Tree for the future by listing each member of the family now with even children and babies having their own pages with especially interesting facets of their lives.

When you list everyone living now, and babies being added each year, the Living Tree grows.  And you can add what you know about your ancestors – your grandparents and great-grandparents and their siblings etc. 

The main ingredients of  a Living Family Tree is:  first ---a core couple.  Then a Director of the project should be chosen to make the decisions about whether to have a website, and how much detail should be collected on each family member.  Perhaps a web communication bureau would be in order, with a volunteer to keep it up-to-date and functioning as an information hub. 

What are the parts of a living family tree?  1st.  of course, is a Family Tree Website available to all which includes the Family Directory listing all members and how to contact them. Invaluable I’m sure during those crises of Life when you must inform the whole family of something. 
Also likely is a Key Date List of birthdays, baptisms, weddings, anniversaries, graduations etc.
This might include a Family Registery listing birth, deaths, marriages, etc. and including those known of the ancestors.

What I like is the “Tip of the Hat” Acclamations suggested in which particular accomplishments of family members, whatever their age, may be given special attention and information for others in the family.  The Directory, or perhaps a Family Board, would decide on what could be included in all these departments of the Living Family tree. 

Announcements might be another department in which short emails would be sent out to inform the family of particular events or news.  This would be like the current “mailing lists” that many families already have.  What the author Gordon Burgett does is show you how to combine all these things people are already doing into an important resource and reference tool now and in the future.  He uses 60 pages to flesh out his idea, then gives you another 100 pages of appendices showing examples of the different categories. 

If you need to get organized as a family in preserving family memorabilia and genealogical information and just fun, this book will be a big help.  For some of us, getting organized is just a pipedream.  Good luck to those of you creating a Living Family Tree. 








© 2009 Story County Genealogical Society.

Book Reviews 



DIGITIZING YOUR FAMILY HISTORY by Rhonda R. McClure.  Published by Family Tree Books, Cincinnati, OH. 2004.  Available at Ames Public Library.  929.1/MCC/2004.  Can be checked out.                  Reviewed by Marti Rasmussen

Preserving your family’s history “these days’ means using digital cameras, scanners, movies, photo editing computer programs and many other “gadgets”.  This book explains the ins and outs, pros and cons of “digitizing” your records, photos and other documents.  Some of the information is a bit dated, but the basics are still relevant and you can adapt the information to more recent developments in scanners, or photo-editing programs. 

Of most interest to many family historians will be the section on digital photography and photo editing/imaging.  Using a scanner to preserve old photos is an integral part of our work as genealogists.  This book explains how to evaluate a scanner and what features are most useful and needed for our research.

 Another section discusses digitizing audio and videotapes and transferring them to DVDs.  Author McClure goes on to evaluate and demonstrate how printing and sharing of the digitized images can be fun as well as a way of preserving your hard work.  She also talks about means of taking the digitized information with you with a PDA or possibly your Blackberry or other device.  This is one place the book’s publishing date five years ago reveals how much progress has been made in these kinds of gadgets. 

 One thing is most important for the modern genealogist.  DON’T FORGET TO BACK UP YOUR FILES.  For disaster could strike at any time and you would lose it all.  And this author shows you how and why you should and can back up your genealogy research now that you have taken time and effort to preserve and digitize your files.  Good luck!