If you read my last blog post titled ” I hate Books” then you were probably waiting for this blog post to be titled “Why You Should Scan Your Genealogy Books”. I will not be publishing that post just yet and I decided that I will leave it for latter on. Instead I sent you this one titled “Introduction to Going Digital with Your Genealogy”. That is right, Going Digital with Your Genealogy. The how do you scan books question that I have been getting is part of a larger need. A need as to how to go completely digital in Genealogy. I decided to start a new Project titled “Going Digital with Genealogy” and you can always access it form the home page of this blog. This is the first blog post in the series and this series includes how to scan books.
Introduction to Going Digital with Your Genealogy
I once heard a fellow researcher state “I have too many stacks of papers that I can no longer find anything”. I thought to my self, glad that I don’t have that problem. When I asked as to why, she responded that she printed out everything and hoped that one day she would get back to it and enter it in her family tree. She also went on to say that when she does have the occasional time she can not find anything. As you can see this is a problem and I hope that you don’t have the same problem but if you do don’t worry. With this series I will help you get all those piles of papers, photos, and documents digitized and organized.
As a drastic contrast to my fellow researcher, I have thousands of digitized files that I have access with a few clicks practically from anywhere in the world as long as I have internet access. I have scanned all my photos and even photos from family members that have giving me the privilege of digitizing them. I have also digitized all of our families papers and documents that I have been able to get a hold of. Finally, I have even digitized every book that I own. As I mentioned before, this has allowed me to not to just have access to my family tree anywhere, but access to all my genealogical data.
By the time you are done with this series you will have gained a strong foundation to go digital in your own Genealogy. You can also use these blog posts as a way to build on top of them. By build I mean find better software, better services, and or perfect on methods. Be ever changing, exploring, and adapting to see what works best for you.
The Main Sections will be:
- Manage Your Family Tree With Software – I will write about the software that I use and also provide other alternatives that are out there.
- Creating your First Report/Book – I will show you how I do my Reports/Books. These are perfect for trading family trees easily.
- Carry Your Family Tree With You – Software for your tablet or smart phone to access your family tree.
- How to Organize Your Digital Files – I will show you the method that I use to keep all my digital files organized.
- Going Paperless – Articles about printing to digital format and also getting rid of those paper piles.
- Digitizing Books – How I digitize my books and you can too.
- Scanning at Archives – Advise about scanning at archives and how I do it.
- Keeping Your Genealogical Data Safe – Keeping all that precious data backed up. Services that I use.
- Everything at Your Fingertips – How to tie everything together with your tablet or Smart Phone.
In this series you will slowly learn how to take your Genealogy from the physical, pen and paper, to the digital age, computer and internet. You can always be up to date with these blog posts in the project page that I have created for it “Going Digital with Genealogy“.
