Computers in Family History (talk)

(Published in Fife Family History Society journal Vol 13 No 2)

 

Genealogy software

The first thing I’m going to discuss tonight is genealogy software.

Once you have got back more than a few generations in your family history, it can be difficult to keep track of all the information - it is easy to get confused between two different people, or to know that you have a piece of information somewhere, but be unable to find it. This is where computers can be useful. It is possible to use general purpose software such as word processors or databases to record your family history, but specially designed software offers many more features, for example:

going directly to the information you need - don’t need to hunt through papers

sorting information

calculating relationships between people

Can print out in many formats

 

As many of you have probably discovered, drawing family trees or pedigree charts by hand is a laborious business, and it is not easy to make changes or additions. Genealogy software can convert the information you put into it into a variety of impressive trees and charts. Depending on the particular program, you might be able to produce ancestor charts, descendant charts, charts in horizontal or vertical format, wheels, charts with pictures on them and so on.

 

Some genealogy software is available as shareware - this means that you can get if for nothing on the internet or magazine cover disks, but you are expected to pay a small fee if you continue to use it after evaluating it.

 

One of the most important things to consider when you are choosing software for family history is whether it has a facility for GEDCOM data transfer. This stands for Genealogical Data Communication. It was developed by the LDS church and it has become the standard format for transferring genealogical data. If your program has a GEDCOM facility, you will be able to export your information to use in a different program, and import data given to you by other people. Nearly all genealogy software can do this, but be careful if you are using an obscure piece of shareware.

 

GEDCOM transfer does not always go smoothly, since some programs do not stick exactly to the standard format. It may be necessary to edit the file manually if it won’t load into the program, or even to load it into another program, export it and load into the one you want to use. Even when you have managed to import your data you may find some of it hasn’t come across correctly and you have to edit it by hand.

 

The most commonly used programs for genealogy are Family Tree Maker, the master genealogist, .... on the PC, and Gene and Reunion on the Mac.

All the software I’m going to talk about is capable of GEDCOM import and export

 

 

Now we are going to have the first of our demonstrations of the evening. I’m going to show you some of the most widely used software.

First of all we have Family Tree Maker

 

ProGen - PC / Mac

System requirements:

Features:

Cost:

 

Family tree maker - PC

System requirements:

Features:

Cost:

 

GSP Family tree comes free with some computers or can be bought quite inexpensively (£20?). It is very limited, with only simple ascestor and descendant charts. It can calculate some interesting statistics, for example life expectancy.

 

Personal Ancestral File - PC / Mac

System requirements:

Features: The original family history program - as used by the Mormons.

 

Gene - Mac

System requirements:

Features: One of the best of the shareware genealogy programs available for the Mac.

Each person entered in the database has a card which lists information about them and allows you to jump to their parents or children. There are also cards for places. Can print ancestor and descendant charts with three levels of information - names only, names and dates, or full information. The appearance of the tree can be altered by changing the size and style of text used. Clicking on a person’s name in the tree takes you to their card. Photographs can be linked to cards but can’t be included on trees. Allows GEDCOM import and export.

Cost: Free trial, ? to register.

 

Heritage

Another shareware program

System requirements: should run on any Mac with at least system 7

Features: Horizontal and vertical ancestor and descendant charts

Cost:

 

Reunion - PC / Mac

System requirements: requires approximately3Mb to run both Reunion and Superchart

Features: A commercial package which more features, and a more professional looking interface, but since there are more features it takes longer to learn

It is based on family cards - each card shows a couple and their children?

2 separate applications - Reunion and Superchart which draws the family trees.

Editable charts which can contain photographs.

Pedigree, descendant, relative and timeline charts

Cost: £70

 

If you have trouble finding genealogy software in the shops, there is a company called S+N Genealogy which can provide all the leading commercial and shareware programs. They also sell data CDs and books.

 

Some genealogy software comes with databases of genealogical information on CDs, but these tend to be American based, and so not very useful to most of us.

But there is some information available on CD which is relevant to this country.

The IGI is available on CD at the mormon family history centres - for example at Winifred Crescent in Kirkcaldy.

One example of this is the CD-ROM we have just finished creating from the indexing of Fife death records. Transcription was carried out from the OPRs and other sources of deaths. These were checked and then input into a special computer program. This was a large and time consuming project. Many of you put a lot of work into the indexing, and I’d like to thank you. It was originally intended that this information would only be available on microfiche, but we decided that it should also be produced as a CD. This enabled us to add informaiton from sources other than the OPRs. The CD has more information than the microfiche, and it is easier to get to the information you want.

 

The Death Index CD-ROM is expected to be available at the family history fair in September, costing about £30

I have a demonstration version here to give you an idea of how it can be used. It will be searchable on any field - name, date, place, cause of death etc.

 

The Data Protection Act

I would like now to say a little bit about the data protection act as it applies to genealogists storing information about living individuals in databases. Those of us who do our genealogy simply as a hobby are completely exempted from registering with the data protection registrar. But as soon as you start charging for your time or expertise you must register, unless all the people you hold information on were born over 120 years ago. Where things become rather unclear is when you are passing information to other researchers about living individuals.

If you want to read more about the data protection act as it applies to genealogists, the society of Genealogists have produced a leaflet.

 

Photographs

I’m going to go on now to talk about photographic enhancement. You probably all have some photographs in your collection that are a bit the worse for wear - scratched, torn, folded, dirty and faded

 

Having photographs professionally restored can be very expensive. But once you have the necessary equipment, you can do it yourself for a fraction of the cost.

So what is the necessary equipment? First of all you need a scanner - this is what reads the photo into the computer. These days you can get an adequate scanner for as little as £50.

A resolution of 300 dpi (dots per inch) is the minimum, and most scanners available offer much higher resolutions than this. Images can be enlarged if scanned in at a higher resolution.

 

The next thing you need is software to enhance the photo. Usually you will get something of this sort free with the scanner, or you can buy something quite cheaply. For a beginner, I would recommend something like Adobe Photodeluxe or Kai’s Photo Soap. For those who want to go into more depth there is Adobe Photoshop which is the standard package used by professionals. Although the full version of this is extremely expensive, it is possible to get a limited edition more cheaply which doesn’t have quite as many features.

Adobe Photoshop is the standard but various other image editing packages are available. PhotoDeluxe is a cut down version of Photoshop and is very easy to learn. Kai’s PhotoSoap has many useful features for retouching photos e.g. removing scratches and red-eye. A large amount of RAM and hard disk space is needed when working with high resolution images.

 

Photographic enhancement can be quite a time consuming business, sometimes taking hours for a single photograph, so it’s not for the impatient.

 

It is possible to enhance photographs in many ways - improving the contrast, removing scratches and dirt, removing red-eye, enlarging or reducing

Can zoom in and see small details

 

In order to print out your photographs you need a photographic quality printer which will cost about £150?, and special glossy photo paper which is available in a number of sizes.

 

Photographs can be included in your database or family history

 

Now I’d like to show you what is possible. These photos were restored using Photoshop. I’ll give you a chance to look at them before we go on to our next topic.

 

Internet

I’m sure you have all by now heard of the internet. It is a worldwide network of computers which developed originally from a network of American defense computers, became used in universities, and can now be used by anyone.

In order to access the internet, you need a modem - this is a small box that you connect to your computer and the telephone line. You also need to be registered with an internet service provider. This is a company that gives you access to the internet. Many internet service providers do not charge anything, and you can pick up their CDs containing all the necessary software in some shops. You will have to pay at the local rate for your phone calls

Another way to access the internet is in some of the local libraries, and they make a small charge for this.

 

One of the important uses of the internet is email. This is a way of communicating with people all over the world.

 

What kind of genealogical information can you find on the internet? Searchable databases, lists of interests, family trees, record offices

 

There are a few good internet sites that will help you to get to useful information.

Cyndislist

www.cyndislist.com

gives access to information covering the whole world.

 

Genuki

www.genuki.org.uk

gives access to information on UK genealogy

 

Because we are all interested in Fife, I’ll tell you a bit about our own web site.

It has:

publications

information about the society

links to other useful sites

surname interests

members mailing list

 

A very important web site is the Family Search site set up by the Mormon church. This enables you to search the worldwide IGI

www.familysearch.org

 

If you have a relative who was killed in one of the wars, a useful site is the Commonwealth War Graves Commission

http://tap.ccta.gov.uk/cwgc

 

Putting your own family history information on the internet is possible using some of the genealogy software, or software for creating web pages. You will need to find out from your internet service provider how to upload your information to their server to make it available to anyone in the world.

 

The registers of Births, Marriages and Deaths at New Register House in Edinburgh can be searched online, for a fee.

Those of you who do not already have a computer may be wondering what to buy. This is a difficult question to answer as everyones needs are different and computer technology changes so quickly.

If you are just intending to do word processing, you can get by with something very basic, possibly secondhand, but I know from experience that people who say they just want to do word processing will soon want to do a lot more!

Genealogy software itself doesn’t have particularly high requirements, so an entry level PC (or Mac) would be OK.

When it comes to things like image editing, ask whether it will be suitable before you buy.

You should also consider what uses other than family history you might want to use your computer for. You may find it useful to get one using the same system as you use at work.

I would recommend someone to buy the best computer that they feel they can afford at that time. Computers advance very quickly, so do not be surprised when better, faster, cheaper models come out soon after you have bought yours.

As for whether to buy a PC or a Mac,. Macs are easier to use and more reliable but more expensive and difficult to find software for. I would say it has to be a personal decision - I have both!

A laptop computer can be taken with you to libraries or record offices so that you can record information directly into the computer.

 

Books

If you want to find out more about using computers for family history, there are a number of booklets available from Family Tree Magazine, etc, such as the David Hawgood books

Computers for Family History

GEDCOM data transfer

Genealogy Computer Packages

Internet for Genealogy

Using computers for genealogy

Genealogy on the Macintosh by David Tippey

Spreadsheet Family Trees by Guy Lawton

Finding Genealogy on the Internet, Web Publishing for Genealogy by Peter Christian

Computer Aided Genealogy by Nigel Bayley