Your Genealogy Legacy - who will look after it?

[Chris Lloyd]

I have just returned home after yet another sojourn in hospital and have been wondering how I can pass on the 30 years of research I have done, for the future use of family.

Has anyone given any thought to this?

and have you made any plans on how to do this?

I have arranged to have my ancestry.com data transferred to a distant cousin but what about the TNG website and all associated data. None of my immediate family are interested in taking over

I would appreciate your ideas of how best to do this.

Cheers

Chris

[GOGGS]

I'm sure others in the group will come up with some great ideas... Here are some of my thoughts:

- See if the distant cousin will take a user/password on your site and make them an administrator

- I have a site that is essentially an "all descendants" of an ancient ancestors with my same surname. If you can find someone that is doing this for your surname (or a "one name study") they might be very interested in the data, and becoming a user, etc. 

- Find another TNG expert with a public tree that would import your data into a gedcom/tree on their system (I might be able to)

- I have novice status on ancestry.com, but... Make your current info fully public, etc. so that when you are no longer paying for membership, some of your info is accessible (I have a "free" account with a public tree)

- It might be a lot of work, but familysearch.org has a lot of data and sources in common with ancestry (including living people that are marked as deceased but are not) - could you build that up to the quality of your data?

- Put your tree on MyHeritage (free account), GEDMatch, etc. so people can find it

Cheers!

GOGGS

[Chris Lloyd]

11 hours ago, GOGGS said:

I'm sure others in the group will come up with some great ideas... Here are some of my thoughts:

Cheers!

GOGGS

Thanks for those suggestions - will have a closer look over the next few days - already have a tree on MyHeritage and Gedmatch, but should probably bring them up to date .

[Katryne]

I've been working on family history since 1972. 3 years ago, I wrote to 56 members of my family asking them to take over. I received 30 replies: 30 "keep up the good work" and 2 "we'd like to help".  Of these 2, Cléa was 8 years old at the time and sent me the beginnings of a tree with what she knew of the family. And the other, a young American cousin, showed no further interest.

When I can't continue, my son may keep the sites online, but he has no interest in the content. So it will probably be like the TNG site of my village, which had 4000 individuals: it will no longer be accessible, and it will disappear.

[omarquet]

I, for me, recommend to publish your data on a site that can more or less guarantee the perennity of your data, like Geneanet.
They foresee a "genealogical will" see: https://en.geneanet.org/profile/genealogical/will

I guess Myheritage and Ancestry must have similar rules.

Kind regards,

(And of course, publishing your (main) data as a paper book is most probably the best chance that a GGG-grandson will once discover and re-use you research)

 

[Rob Roy]

I am 77 and have the same issue.  I think my son will take over the host site, so it will remain for a while, but I figure the max of five years after I am gone.  Quite frankly, long ago I learned that no one really cares.  We say we do this hobby for the family, but we really do it because we love it.  I shall continue my enjoyment.

[Chris Lloyd]

10 hours ago, Katryne said:

When I can't continue, my son may keep the sites online, but he has no interest in the content. So it will probably be like the TNG site of my village, which had 4000 individuals: it will no longer be accessible, and it will disappear.

It is somewhat sad that all that effort will go - of course some will be in the 'wayback' machine archive

[Chris Lloyd]

9 hours ago, omarquet said:

I, for me, recommend to publish your data on a site that can more or less guarantee the perennity of your data, like Geneanet.
They foresee a "genealogical will" see: https://en.geneanet.org/profile/genealogical/will

I guess Myheritage and Ancestry must have similar rules.

Kind regards,

(And of course, publishing your (main) data as a paper book is most probably the best chance that a GGG-grandson will once discover and re-use you research)

 

Great ideas, I have already mostly completed the "story" of my life on paper that may be of interest to someone some day I think I will publish all my gata on pdf as the format is likely to be around for a long time.

[Chris Lloyd]

6 hours ago, Rob Roy said:

I am 77 and have the same issue.  I think my son will take over the host site, so it will remain for a while, but I figure the max of five years after I am gone.  Quite frankly, long ago I learned that no one really cares.  We say we do this hobby for the family, but we really do it because we love it.  I shall continue my enjoyment.

So true !!

[mahesh]

Great and timely Topic. I have been thinking about this for past few months as I pass 82: past 18 months have been challenging due to health issues.
My thinking is to get a reasonably stable environment for TNG (or another software).

• I have been using Wordpress for over 10 years but it does need constant watch. For stable environment, first thing, is to get rid ofWordpress.
• I like the Wordpress nav-menu. Replicating the WP menu in TNG is taking much longer than I anticipated. Hopefully I'll get there.
• There are many pages (produced by TngApi and WP shortcode construtor) which I would like to migrate to TNG.
• Once this is done, put TNG in a virtual, transportable,container, like Docker  so complete software could be moved as one, anywhere. (say to a host like AWS?).
• Docker is a virtual container, making it easy to create, deploy, and run application like TNG. It encapsulates everything an application needs to run (like code, libraries, dependencies) into container images. These containers run consistently on any environment: your laptop, a testing server, or a production data center. I have put more details, here.
• With all dependencies encapsulated, it should not be affected by software updates etc. Data can stil be updated, if possible, by a nominated administrator.

So that's the plan. What do you think?

[GOGGS]

@mahesh I like the approach/plan. I've been hosting my public facing TNG site on a "bare" AWS linux server for about 5 years. I don't use any Wordpress stuff, just TNG. AWS is fairly low maintenance, but there are updates that can be run, new linux platforms to adopt to remain supported, etc. I haven't studied what would happen if an instance wasn't updated or migrated for a very long time. I'm assuming at some point, many things won't work anymore, and security risks would prompt AWS to take the instance offline. Getting a family member to pay the small yearly cost and pay someone to do the backend maintenance might be an option.

I'd also like to do something like you've described, so I'll follow as this progresses (and help, if needed). At least the database, exported as an SQL text format, should last a pretty long time.

Cheers

 

GOGGS

[mahesh]

...

1 hour ago, GOGGS said:

@mahesh and pay someone to do the backend maintenance might be an option.

Interesting point. Let me find out if and when that would be necessary.

I'd also like to do something like you've described, so I'll follow as this progresses (and help, if needed)

Thanks for your encouragement. This is a long term (2025/26) project. Lets's hope we can carry it through.

[omarquet]

4 hours ago, mahesh said:

• With all dependencies encapsulated, it should not be affected by software updates etc. Data can stil be updated, if possible, by a nominated administrator.

So that's the plan. What do you think?

Dear Mahesch, 

I think that in 20-40-60 years time, by 2085, the display of our data in a TNG format will not be very relevant: it is already a bit outdated today and not very sexy.
And PhP, SQL and all actual internet providers might have disappeared by then. 
The important thing is to have our data preserved until then: Gedcom data, sources and images. 
I would recommend to publish them, as much as possible: ancesty, familysearch, geneanet.

And publish them as books. (I really believe books will survive longer than digital repositories.) 


 

[Katryne]

Olivier, about books, what would you recommend ? The Ahnentafel thing in TNG is not very sexy, and can be boring for a large family tree.

My American family wrote a book 40 years ago, I mean a genealogy book. I found it at Wayback Machine. And re-published it on one of my sites : https://album.chauvigne.info/picture?/a-breton-family-in-america/category/documents

But the edition soon sold out, and the paper version is now only available in 2 libraries worldwide, including the Library of Congress.
 Even a book is not eternal, and without Internet archives, I wouldn't have had it.

[Chris Lloyd]

5 hours ago, mahesh said:

Great and timely Topic. I have been thinking about this for past few months as I pass 82: past 18 months have been challenging due to health issues.
My thinking is to get a reasonably stable environment for TNG (or another software).

• I have been using Wordpress for over 10 years but it does need constant watch. For stable environment, first thing, is to get rid ofWordpress.
• I like the Wordpress nav-menu. Replicating the WP menu in TNG is taking much longer than I anticipated. Hopefully I'll get there.
• There are many pages (produced by TngApi and WP shortcode construtor) which I would like to migrate to TNG.
• Once this is done, put TNG in a virtual, transportable,container, like Docker  so complete software could be moved as one, anywhere. (say to a host like AWS?).
• Docker is a virtual container, making it easy to create, deploy, and run application like TNG. It encapsulates everything an application needs to run (like code, libraries, dependencies) into container images. These containers run consistently on any environment: your laptop, a testing server, or a production data center. I have put more details, here.
• With all dependencies encapsulated, it should not be affected by software updates etc. Data can stil be updated, if possible, by a nominated administrator.

So that's the plan. What do you think?

Some really great ideas here Mahesh - thanks. I agree that WP isd something that needs to be constantly monitored and updated, so not really a suitable format for longevity.

My inclination now is to do digital and print formats of my data in a way that I hope could be replicated/transposed to modern formats in the future.  I think I will use an SSD as the digital 'host' and also printed pdf's that should allow accurate OCR.

Cheers

Chrtis

[Chris Lloyd]

4 hours ago, GOGGS said:

@mahesh 

At least the database, exported as an SQL text format, should last a pretty long time.

Part of my thinking - thanks.

[Chris Lloyd]

47 minutes ago, Katryne said:

 

My American family wrote a book 40 years ago, I mean a genealogy book. I found it at Wayback Machine. And re-published it on one of my sites : https://album.chauvigne.info/picture?/a-breton-family-in-america/category/documents

 

I have a copy of a home published family tree for my wife that was produced about 60 years ago on a typewriter - this one was probably the 4th or 5th carbon copy so is quite hard to read.

As far as I know, I have the only remaining copy. I keep it in acid free envelop in the dark.

[mahesh]

22 hours ago, GOGGS said:

@mahesh I'm assuming at some point, many things won't work anymore, and security risks would prompt AWS to take the instance offline. Getting a family member to pay the small yearly cost and pay someone to do the backend maintenance might be an option.

I'd also like to do something like you've described, so I'll follow as this progresses (and help, if needed). At least the database, exported as an SQL text format, should last a pretty long time. GOGGS

Thank you. I am led to believe that with everything an application needs to run (like code, libraries, dependencies) into container images, the 'Docker'containers

would run consistently on any environment. It's going to be very s l o w process but I'll try keep you update.

18 hours ago, omarquet said:

I think that in 20-40-60 years time, by 2085, the display of our data in a TNG format will not be very relevant: it is already a bit outdated today and not very sexy.
And PhP, SQL and all actual internet providers might have disappeared by then.

In my case, at my age, even 5 years may be too long. 

Once done, I would try and re-evaluate the strategy, every four to five years.

In my lifetime I have witnessed some amazing changes!

Just for fun 😂:

• My first camera took 8 photos per roll
• I was 18 when I was, first, introduced to a TV screen
• My first program was written on punched cards
• I built my first computer in 1970's. It had an amazing 3Kb of system EPROM and 5Kb of RAM, using 40 chips.
• My first internet document download allowed me to make and have cup of coffee.
• I thought CDs & VCR's where the future, so I digitised most of my vinyls. How wrong I was!

The pace of change is going to be even crazier. All we can do is plan as things stand.

17 hours ago, Chris Lloyd said:

Some really great ideas here Mahesh - thanks. I agree that WP isd something that needs to be constantly monitored and updated, so not really a suitable format for longevity.

My inclination now is to do digital and print formats of my data in a way that I hope could be replicated/transposed to modern formats in the future.  I think I will use an SSD as the digital 'host' and also printed pdf's that should allow accurate OCR.

 

Thanks Chris. Printed format will not work for me. My Database is very young with 75% of individuals, living.

I guess having the container hosted on internet, on USB and on local server may be provide longevity. I guess the PDF format may still be around for while so a book in PDF format may provide some longevity.

 

 

[GOGGS]

I like the idea of a book as well, but...

My project started by continuing what a couple of distant cousins started, finding all of the descendants of the first of my surname to come to the USA. The book is about 500 pages (without the index) and was developed from the mid '60's and published in the early 80's. My father started transcribing the outline format into a tree software program. For about 20,000 individuals, this is a GREAT DEAL of work. I have about 55,000 in the tree now, which I know is just a portion of the tree - you know how it is when you read an obituary and it says "she is also survived by 18 grand-children, 24 great-grand-children...", ugh, I don't who any of them are (yet).

I will still try and print/publish something for the reasons suggested, but I hope no one ever has to resort to this as an input source...

As others have suggested, besides some best attempt at a current digital "footprint", ensuring that some of the commercial on-line services are up-to-date might be the most hopeful. WikiTree, FindAGrave, and FamilySearch are all single-tree databases, but not great in terms of quality so far.

Cheers

GOGGS

[Newfloridian]

There have been a couple of firms offering long term storage in the UK mentioning particularly TNG databases. Browsing today I came across this site which might do the same (sent them a query about a complete database and am awaiting a reply.

Permanent Legacy Foundation

Alan

(The book option could be an interesting one but I already have over 500 illustrated articles on site authored using historytemplate.php) 

 

[Chris Lloyd]

7 hours ago, Newfloridian said:

There have been a couple of firms offering long term storage in the UK mentioning particularly TNG databases. Browsing today I came across this site which might do the same (sent them a query about a complete database and am awaiting a reply.

Permanent Legacy Foundation

Alan

(The book option could be an interesting one but I already have over 500 illustrated articles on site authored using historytemplate.php) 

 

Thanks for that - would be interested in their response.

I will have a look at what they offer, as it appears to be a one-off fee.

Cheers

Chris

[Chris Lloyd]

10 hours ago, mahesh said:

Just for fun 😂:

• My first camera took 8 photos per roll
• I was 18 when I was, first, introduced to a TV screen
• My first program was written on punched cards
• I built my first computer in 1970's. It had an amazing 3Kb of system EPROM and 5Kb of RAM, using 40 chips.
• My first internet document download allowed me to make and have cup of coffee.
• I thought CDs & VCR's where the future, so I digitised most of my vinyls. How wrong I was!

Similar for me - started programming in Fortran in 1969 on punch cards and had to wait days to get results.

[Newfloridian]

Hi Chris

Here is the reply from the Permanent Legacy Foundation. It maybe that if they get more enquiries from the TNG Community it will spur them onwards to some sort of fascility.

 

Hi Alan,

 

Thank you so much for reaching out to us with your question and for your interest in Permanent. What a cool website! I had not previously heard of TNG, but it was interesting and neat to see how powerful of a tool it is to build a website to share genealogical research.

 

We like to say at Permanent that if it's made of bits, we can ingest it and store it in Permanent. This means that we accept any file type for preservation in the Permanent.org platform. When you upload any files to your Permanent archive, the original files are always available for you to download and view on your computer (assuming you have the correct software to open them).

 

However, there are a limited number of files that we support on Permanent.org for viewing and accessing directly within your archive. These are mostly photo, video, audio, and word processing files that we are able to render and show within a web browser or a mobile app (you can learn more about that here). Unfortunately, websites and website archive files are generally not able to be viewed directly in Permanent. You're welcome to upload the files that make up your website for preservation, but the website itself would not be available for viewing within Permanent at this time.

 

Website preservation is a challenge, and one we are constantly considering in regards to the Permanent.org platform. While we don't currently support website playback on Permanent, there are a few options that might be worth considering. Webrecorder (or Conifer, which I believe is the name of the project now) is a tool that creates a viewable archive of a website that can be created by interacting with your site. This might be somewhat of a challenge for particularly large sites, however, as you generally have to navigate to each page to capture it. This creates a web archive file (WARC) that can be replayed in Conifer or preserved separately (such as on Permanent). WARCs are the most common preservation format for websites, and there are a number of other ways you can create them as well. The Wayback Machine from the Internet Archive also provides a place for you to capture and preserve websites on their site.

 

Although Permanent does not currently support WARC files for playback, this is something we've discussed trying to implement in the future. I cannot guarantee that Permanent will support WARC files in the future or what the timeline for that could look like, but we recognize that preserving websites like yours is an important piece of ensuring that today's stories are preserved for the future. Hearing feedback from people like you helps us to better understand the needs of website builders and prioritize future development, so we really appreciate hearing from you.

[Katryne]

Last year, I closed the genealogy TNG website of the village. I made backups and gave it to the Historical society. But nobody there would take over. Before closing down, I ask Wayback machine to save the pages, following links. I am supposed to be a member at Internet archives and it should have worked. I just had a look and it's really disapointing : home page is perfect with content and style. I can click on links from this page, a 2nd page can be opened, but has lost the style, it's text only. I cannot reach a 3rd link from the second level.

Try it for yourself, if you mind : http://web.archive.org/web/20230502063028/https://genealogie.revestou.fr/  and cry with me : it's lost for ever.

Edit : I see that "976 URLs have been captured for this URL prefix." Even if I had asked for all the pages to be saved.

[Chris Lloyd]

2 hours ago, Newfloridian said:

Hi Chris

Here is the reply from the Permanent Legacy Foundation. It maybe that if they get more enquiries from the TNG Community it will spur them onwards to some sort of fascility.

Thanks - their response does open some possibilities.... Wayback machine leaves a lot to be desired - I started building websites commercially in 1996 and most of them now only show a Home page....

1 hour ago, Katryne said:

Try it for yourself, if you mind : http://web.archive.org/web/20230502063028/https://genealogie.revestou.fr/  and cry with me : it's lost for ever.

It is difficult