Genealogy Preservation

Have you seen Randy Seaver's recent post, "Ask AI: 'How Can I Pass On My Genealogy Research'?" If not, it's well worth reading—and it includes a great "do it yourself" exercise at the end.

Using Randy's prompt as a guide, I adapted it to fit my own situation and asked ChatGPT what options I have for preserving my lifetime of genealogy research.

Many genealogists have a wealth of family photographs, family letters, home movies, record images, research articles, ancestor biographical sketches or notes, etc. Some researchers have these in physical form, or in digital form, or in a mix of physical and digital. The information extracted from all of this information is included in a family tree software program or an online family tree as names, relationships, events, dates, places, sources, research or biographical notes, with links to digitized record or photo images.

As an example, I have over 29,000 profiles in my RootsMagic database with over 28,000 profiles in my Ancestry tree. Much of my tree has been shared on My Heritage and Geneanet. I have created profiles for most of my ancestors back thru 6 generations. I have over 43,000 files (265.44 GB) in my genealogy exhibits folder. This includes scanned copies of my paper research, scanned images from family photo albums, images of family Bible and funeral records, images of records downloaded from Ancestry and other sites, clippings of newspaper articles. I have 107 Scrivener projects containing my research notes. I have published over 2,500 blog posts about my research. Many of my recent posts tell the stories of my ancestors thru biographies, song and video. I have about 16 linear feet of shelving for family notebooks. I have 3 file drawers full of research notes. All of this has been collected over the last 48 years.

I live in Nemaha County and volunteer at the Nemaha County Historical Society. However, none of my ancestors or close relatives lived in Nemaha County. My ancestral lines are found in Ford, Woodson, Coffey, Doniphan, Leavenworth, and Lyon counties. Most of those counties either do not have an active historical society or do not have a facility capable of preserving large genealogy collections. While the state of Kansas maintains an archive, it also does not have the funding or space to accept every large family history collection.

I do not have any children, and I'm fairly certain that my nieces and nephew do not have either the space or the desire to take on my paper files. As a result, I've been trying to share more of my research through this blog while gradually reducing the amount of paper I keep. Although my digital files are well organized, I'm not even certain they would want to inherit the research. I've also been uploading family photographs to the Memories section of FamilySearch whenever possible.

I am 74 years old and live 75 miles from the nearest genealogy archive or research library.

What options do I have to pass this material on to not only my descendants and relatives, but also to other researchers? Please describe organizations, repositories, companies and websites (free or subscription) that might help me gather and save my research for posterity.

ChatGPT's detailed response began with the following assessment:

From what you've described, you have created far more than a genealogy database. You have assembled a research archive consisting of:

• 29,000+ documented individuals
• 43,000 digital files (265+ GB)
• 107 Scrivener projects
• 2,500+ blog posts
• videos, songs, biographies, timelines
• original paper research
• original photographs
• decades of research notes

That collection has value well beyond your own family.

I would think about this as three separate preservation goals, because no single organization can adequately preserve everything.

• Preserve the family tree.
• Preserve the digital archive.
• Preserve the research stories and interpretation.

That introduction was followed by 27 different ideas for preserving a lifetime of genealogy research. The suggestions ranged from continuing to share information on FamilySearch and Ancestry, to creating published family histories, donating materials to genealogy libraries and archives, preserving my website through the Internet Archive, maintaining multiple backups, and preparing a written finding aid describing the entire collection.

The response concluded with the following advice:

What I Would Do If This Were My Collection

Given the scope of your work, I would not look for one home for everything. Instead, I would deliberately distribute it so that no single failure could erase your life's work.

Continue maintaining your primary tree in RootsMagic while synchronizing with Ancestry, FamilySearch, MyHeritage, and Geneanet.

Continue uploading irreplaceable photographs and documents to FamilySearch Memories so they are attached to the people they document.

Export and preserve your blog in multiple formats (WordPress export, full site backup, PDF/EPUB collections) and archive it with the Internet Archive.

Turn your major surname and locality research (Crawford, Briles, Hutchinson, Wells, Burke, Kansas county research, etc.) into well-organized PDF or print volumes, then donate copies to major genealogy libraries such as the Allen County Public Library Genealogy Center and the Midwest Genealogy Center, along with appropriate Kansas repositories.

Keep multiple backups of your complete digital archive using the 3-2-1 rule.

Create a comprehensive finding aid and legacy guide describing the entire collection and how it is organized.

One additional thought, based on everything we've worked on together over the past year: your 2,500+ blog posts, ancestor biographies, document transcriptions, AI-assisted historical narratives, and videos together form something much larger than a personal research collection. They are becoming a digital history of dozens of Midwestern families. Preserving those stories in searchable, durable formats may ultimately have as much value as preserving the underlying documents themselves.

After reading those recommendations, I asked ChatGPT to go one step further and develop an action plan that could realistically be implemented over the next year. The resulting roadmap broke the project into manageable phases, beginning with taking inventory of my collections and backups, then creating finding aids, publishing family histories, archiving my website, identifying repositories, reducing paper files, and finally creating a comprehensive legacy guide.

The plan concluded with one suggestion that particularly caught my attention:

Given the quality and breadth of your work, I think you should consider creating The Heartland Genealogy Archive.

Instead of treating your blog, videos, biographies, transcriptions, AI-assisted narratives, and document collections as separate projects, treat them as parts of one curated archive. Give it its own identity and documentation, with a master index that answers questions like:

• Which surnames are covered?
• Which counties are represented?
• Where can each biography, video, or transcription be found?
• What has been published, and what remains unpublished?

That master index would become the roadmap to nearly five decades of work. For future cousins, researchers, and repositories, it could be every bit as valuable as the collection itself.

Achieving everything ChatGPT suggested won't happen overnight—in fact, it will probably take years. But the conversation helped me shift my thinking. Instead of wondering what will happen to my research someday, I now have a roadmap for preserving it one step at a time.

My hope is that, years from now, a distant cousin I've never met—or another genealogist researching one of these Midwestern families—will still be able to benefit from the records, stories, photographs, and research I've spent nearly five decades collecting.

Thank you, Randy Seaver, for the inspiration to ask the question in the first place.