HCGS 8 Aug 2009 "Put Your Family History Together: Write, Print, Publish"

Our program Saturday, August 8th was Karen Sutherland-Pahia presenting "Ways to Put Your Family History Together - - Writing, Printing, Publishing, etc. Customization and image was discussed in front of a large audience. She brought examples of her published works as did society members to show at the meeting. Karen has worked many years with genealogy and working to identify and keep track of the various lines of her farmily's largely Scottish and Hawaiian heritage. In her quest for family history she has even fallen into graves. Sad story that after her grandmother died, all the family photos disappeared with no one knowing what happened to them. Digitalizing photos and documents became critical to preserving the family history. A user of Family Tree Maker software she has organized, written and assembled may histories which she publishes at Kinkos for a good quality and low price. Kinkos provides a free "Proof Copy" to review before they publish the copies you pay for. One family history book she ordered was 50 copies of a 1000 page family line. She uses a combination of the Family Tree Maker Books feature and Microsoft Word. Including picture images within the genealogy report makes the history more interesting and readable, and it's easiest to add pictures after the text is completed. Choice of binding is important, and she uses a spiral had back variety. A flat glued binding is more expensive. It was mentioned that the Family History Library in Salt Lake City prefers unbound pages so they can do the binding there for any copies of family histories that might be donated, rather than the spiral binding.

The index is very important to the book, and also is time consuming once you start adding photo images to the report. So you have to update the page numbers and index when you disturbe the generated genealogy report. She also recommended using spell check as you go, while entering data.

Lenore Hansen gave a short review of her attendance at the Southern California Genealogical Society's Jamboree recently in Burbank, California.

Suzanne Case asked everyone to bring a family heirloom to the next meeting and we will discuss the history and importance to the family for each.

Thanks to Lenore and to Martha for the refreshments.