Thursday, March 13, 2008

Publishing Your Work

Have you published any of your work yet? If you haven't maybe it is time you think about it. After you are gone will anyone be able to find the genealogy work you did?

Please consider using your genealogy program to print out a report about your family. Put a copy in a binder that you keep in your house. Make one or more copies that you send to one or more genealogy libraries. Consider donating copies to the genealogy library of the Latter-day Saints in Salt Lake City, Utah and to the library in Fort Wayne, Indiana.

It isn't necessary to bind the copies you send to these libraries. The LDS library will probably photograph the pages either on microfilm or microfiche. That's easier to do when the pages aren't bound. Once the genealogy is on film and in the LDS catalog a copy of the genealogy can be sent, on film, to any Family History Center in the world for use there. In the case of microfiche the film remains at the local Family History Center. The last time I checked microfilm was returned to Salt Lake City after the loan period.

Putting your genealogy in either of these libraries will insure that others can find the document because both have online catalogs of their holdings.

There are many other good candidate libraries where you could also donate. Consider The Library of Congress; the DAR Library; the libraries of your local historical or genealogical societies.

During the years when I was very actively working on genealogy I often found reference to the work that someone had done in the past. Most of the time, even when I was able to contact members of the family where the work was done, I wasn't able to find a copy of the genealogy. What a pity.

Don't let this happen to your work.

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