Family History in the Digital Age: Plus ça change...

The digital age has changed almost everything we do, from shopping to traveling to staying in touch. And the pace of digital change is not showing any signs of slowing. But some things never change - the need to shop and travel and our need to stay in touch. Our interest in genealogy and family history has not changed either - if anything its the opposite. What has changed is the way we research family history - and how we share our findings.

In this blog I am going to share the story of one woman who has embraced the new digital tools and told her own family story that goes back many generations.

First off, on the research side, Ancestry.com - the premier on-line family history resource site - now boasts over 4 billion documentary records in their database. Four Billion! One of the most popular searches on Ancestry.com is the search of early 20th Century Census records - they almost always turn up interesting tidbits. (I did some research this week for a video biography and discovered that the subject's mother's age was - in truth - 3 years older than she had always said!)

As many genealogy and family history resources as there are on the web, a whole lot more information is still tied up in old county records. County courthouses have been the repositories of record for centuries. What kind of records? Court records like divorces, name changes, naturalizations, adoptions, and civil suits; Vital records like births, deaths and marriages; Estate records like wills, administrations, bond books, accounts, and guardianship records; Land records like deeds, mortgages, survey and plat books Genealogy Video: Courthouse Secrets.

Few of us can reach back and connect as readily to our ancestors as a recent client Susan P. She is a graduate of Oberlin College - just like her husband, parents, and all 4 grandparents. Can you believe that? Susan became a librarian and her career spanned carbon paper to WiFi. And being a librarian, she wanted to make sure that not just her story - but the story of her ancestors would be accessible and interesting to her grandchildren.

The good news for Susan was that on the sharing side, the digital age presents endless opportunities to share the results of family history research with blogs, personal and public websites, and on-line magazines and hub pages. Not to mention all the opportunities that now exist to share family history video: Genealogy Video is Taking Genealogy to a New Level.

Interest in genealogy and family history are a long tradition with Susan's kin and successive generations have documented their lives with diaries and personal histories. Add a rich photographic record and in Susan's hands those past generations were guaranteed to live well into the future. Susan decided to use historical family images uploaded to a photo sharing site to explain some of the history of her remarkable family:



The digital age certainly presents many choices in how we choose to showcase our family history research. I wrote an article recently comparing the advantages and disadvantages of written, audio and video memoirs: Personal History Biography: Audio, Video or Written Memoir? Written memoirs are as popular as ever, and with the option now of self-publishing the results in attractive and reasonably priced books this method of preserving family history will remain a great option.

Voice recording is another great way to record personal history - and with the help of iTunes it is now easy to turn your audio tracks of the family story into CDs and iPod fodder. Some people mix these audio recordings into their iPod play lists and enjoy the voices of history speaking to them among their own favorite songs!

Naturally I have a bias towards video - because of all the media it is the most personal, immediate and comprehensive. Video is able to capture the personality of the subject - although there are certainly more technical challenges in putting it all together.

As I wrote elsewhere recently, there was a time when family history was the preserve of the maiden aunts. To hear the stories we had to suffer through best china and arm chair doilies and endless digressions on medical procedures suffered by even older and more distant relatives (or worse, totally unheard of acquaintances). The stories would come - between polite sips of tea and in a miasma of perfume and powder. As a means of enlisting the interest of the younger generations, it didn't have a lot going for it.

Today's younger generations are more interested in family history than ever before. The whole country is. But they are demanding that those maiden aunts (and all the rest of us who fulfill the function of "family historian") get with the times. They want their family history accessible and they want it compelling: Family History in the Digital Age: Fine China and Lace Doilies Begone!

Although the tools to research and showcase family history have changed, our interest in it has not. The more things change, the more they stay the same as the French saying has it. Genealogy is going from strength to strength in the new digital age. But the challenge for all of us who fulfill the role of family historians is to get with the times. We have an opportunity like never before to to enroll the interest of our children and grandchildren and our nieces and our nephews by using the new tools that are now available. Just like Susan did.