Genealogy Forum UK

Forgive me if this has been covered before... still a newbie here!

I have been thinking alot lately about the long term preservation of all the family tree research that everyone has done. Just imagine how many man hours have gone into everyones' trees on 'Ancestry'! just for starters ( I don't even want to start adding up the hours I have spent!)

I would like to think that in a 100 years from now a descendant would be able to look at the tree info. we have all done and not have to start from scratch.

Does anyone know of the long term plans for sites such as 'Ancestry' , 'Find My Past' etc. Do they intend to be around for ever?.... or is there some central source that is willing to archive all this data?

What are others doing?.... have you printed out 'hard copies' of your trees or had books printed... or are you preserving the info. on a disk?

Expat

expat66 wrote:Forgive me if this has been covered before... still a newbie here!

I have been thinking alot lately about the long term preservation of all the family tree research that everyone has done. Just imagine how many man hours have gone into everyones' trees on 'Ancestry'! just for starters ( I don't even want to start adding up the hours I have spent!)

I would like to think that in a 100 years from now a descendant would be able to look at the tree info. we have all done and not have to start from scratch.

Does anyone know of the long term plans for sites such as 'Ancestry' , 'Find My Past' etc. Do they intend to be around for ever?.... or is there some central source that is willing to archive all this data?

What are others doing?.... have you printed out 'hard copies' of your trees or had books printed... or are you preserving the info. on a disk?

Expat

I started by keeping a printed copy of everything - census, certificates, photos etc but when I got to ten lever arch files about six years ago, I stopped doing that and now keep everything on disc, backed up every week on a portable disc drive. The only hard copies I keep now are certificates I have paid for.

I keep my precious family research on Rootsmagic and have one file for each part of my family. When I enter information onto the tree, I number each certificate, census record, photo and other information and that number is indexed to a person's file, so that I and anyone else can easily find. My kids aren't really interested in it at the moment, but do know how to find everything on my computer, so that if anything happens to me, even if no-one wants to carry on with the research, it is safe.

I also keep a copy of everything on Tribal Pages and have shared this with members of my family.

The only thing I can do at the moment is share and backup on disc and I suppose in time when this type of archiving is out of date, it will all be transferred onto whatever takes its place, much like we have just done with all our family videos and had them put onto CD.

Some goverments make regular backups of internet sites they think are worth preserving.

For instance in Australia we have Pandora.

http://pandora.nla.gov.au/

And they keep multiple copies of websites over the years since 1996.

For instance, they have the AIGS (Australian Institute of Genealogical Studies) from different years. I found it facsinating to see how big ourl ibrary has grown in the last seven years!

http://pandora.nla.gov.au/tep/34164

They are preserving these sites the same as they would important manuscripts and books.

Our own personal backups can only be done on temporary media.

Even CD's and DVD's will be useless in 50 years as they oxidise.

Soon we will have access to hologram based storage technology.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Holographic_data_storage

A small cube of hologram memory could store terrabytes of information permanently.

That technology will allow us to archive with assurance that the data will be readable by our decendants in 100 years time.

When I've tied up all the loose ends on my tree, I plan to have a book printed. Don't know for sure which site I'll use to do it though. My canvas looks okay, and so does Solentro (more basic though). I think I'll do a dvd through tribal pages too!

My lot so far have no interest in any of it
May be one day.

I have tribal pages, not that I do much on my own now! Its on Ancestry some of it I think
I have folders, my children bought me one I wanted to keep written things in and certificates.
The cover of it has a picture of a screw and then says loose!

I have my gedcom on disk and on one of them memory sticks...

Storings things on what we use now will change very much so I thinks its important to keep up to date on new things that may take over.

Like my music tapes I have nothing to play them on now.
Videos of us Ive bought a thing to convert to DVD, not done that yet either
Jo