Genealogy Software - Good Idea or Not?

When I first started researching my genealogy in 1983, there was no Internet so to speak – at least outside of the military and some higher education sectors. People did not have personal computers in their home. The first home PCs were introduced in about 1985 and cost about $3,000. My “software” consisted of several yellow legal tablets. My research was conducted largely by traveling to LDS Family History Centers and scrolling through microfilm on microfilm readers. If I encountered something on microfilm that I wanted, I had to request for the film to be sent from Utah and return to the Center a few weeks later to view it. If, after viewing the actual record I wanted a copy of it, I paid a nominal fee for a copy.

This was my routine for many years, and as a result, I have binder after binder, folder after folder, of my research. Because I was fortunate enough to still have living elders at the time, I spoke with most of them, took notes and created even more paper to be filed. I traveled to libraries in different cities, buried myself in whatever books were available on genealogy in Virginia and took lots of notes. When I traveled to different cities on business, I would always check out the telephone book (remember those?) to see how many listings there were for my surname. (I have a fairly uncommon surname.) Sometimes, I would even call these people to see if I could establish a connection to my Virginian ancestors.

 Because I worked in the technology industry in academe, I became an early user of the Internet and computers – at work. PCs were still uncommon in the home and there were no genealogy software programs. As the Internet develop and spread, so did software programs. In about 1995, FamilyTreeMaker was introduced and I was an early adoptee of the program. Finally, a way to store all the data I had been collecting for so many years! I used it as a standalone program because home Internet access was not widely available. It was still wonderful, however, to be able to enter information directly into a computer instead of writing down tediously all the information I gathered. This is especially important because paper deteriorates over the years as do photographs. Digital media lasts a lot longer than paper. In 2014, as we all know, the Internet has fully blossomed as has genealogy software. Most people have high access Internet in their homes and FamilyTreeMaker software now has a direct tie-in to ancestry.com and the two work together seamlessly. Personal scanners are now comparatively inexpensive and portable, making it quite easy to scan photos received from family and other sources.

You might be wondering what all this has to do with the title of this blog post? I’ve discovered only recently that it seems many people are relying on a website to both work on and to store, their genealogy. This, in my humble opinions is A VERY BAD IDEA for several reasons. First, many people do not read the Terms of Agreement when they join a website. They are so anxious to get started, they quickly click the Agreement without thoroughly reading it. Put simply, you agree to Ancestry.com having a license to YOUR work product. By using their site, you enter into a contract with them. Ancestry.com and FamilyTreeMaker have, like many companies, undergone changes in ownership over the years. New owners can, and usually do, bring new rules. I am not comfortable at all with having all my eggs in one basket so to speak. If your genealogy is ONLY store on some company’s website (servers) and if that company, folds or goes bankrupt, all of your research might well be lost. Alternatively, a new company may increase their subscription fees substantially and you may no longer wish to subscribe to the site. What happens to “your” work product then? Is it held hostage? Does the license you entered into mean you cannot simply remove everything from their service? Secondly, though Internet availability is widespread, there will be times when it is not avail to you.

What then, if a website is the only place where you work on your genealogy? Further, websites encounter downtime for any number of reasons. Recently, ancestry.com was hit by a Denial of Service attack. This attack effectively shut down their site for almost an entire week. Users who totally relied on that site sat around twiddling their fingers, unable to do any research. This type of attack, while unfortunate, is not unheard of in the world of the Internet.

While writing this blog post, I checked the prices on most of the popular genealogy programs. None that I found are more than $50, with most costing closer to $35. Using a genealogy program ensures that your data, your work product, is always available to you, whether you have Internet connectivity or not, whether a website is down or not.

I also always advise fellow genealogists to store a backup of their genealogy file (Gedcom) elsewhere. Store it on an external hard drive or subscribe to a cloud service and store it there. Just don’t let your hard drive be the only depository of your family file.

Blessings, 


T