Share Your Research
You can drastically improve your chances of connecting with other people researching your family line by making it easier for them to find you. Many people have connected with other branches of their family tree through an online website or community forum. Even the information posted through online obituary services and remembrance books has been known to bring families together.
One of the easiest ways to share your family history online is to upload a GEDCOM of your family history file to one or more of the lineage-linked databases previously discussed in this chapter. Your family tree doesn't need to be “finished” or even close to it, as long as what you do contribute has been well researched and you're comfortable with its accuracy. If your family tree is still very much a work in progress and you are unsure of some of your information, look for a service which allows you to easily add information or make corrections as your research progresses.
When creating your GEDCOM file for online publication, consider how much information you want to share online, and what you hope to achieve.
It's always a good idea, of course, to remove personal information about living individuals before publishing your family tree online.
Many people choose to include their sources, as this makes it easier for others to follow your research. Some family historians worry, however, that if they provide too much information people will just take and add it to their own family tree without contacting the researcher, which works against the point of putting the family tree online in the first place. To avoid this, some researchers choose to eliminate their sources from online family trees, and instead include a note asking anyone who is interested in further information to contact the researcher.
If you like to use the Notes field of your genealogy software for everything from contact information to personal thoughts, stories, and questions concerning your relatives, it is best to leave that on your computer and not make it part of your online family tree. That generally falls under the category of “too much information.”
If you don't feel comfortable sharing your entire family tree online, there are other good options for reaching online researchers. One good way to connect with others who may be researching your family is to add your surnames to the RootsWeb Surname List (
If you're creative and want to go beyond what most family tree databases offer, you may want to consider publishing your own family history website or blog. Publishing your family history online in this manner is discussed in more detail in Chapter 14.
