Have you prepared a hard copy of your genealogy research for your family?

[csziggy]

16. If you wait until you "finish" your research, you'll never get around to sharing it

That's why I simply re-edited Mom's books. Mom and Dad's mother both only cared about getting Patriots for DAR, so for most families they didn't go farther back than those ancestors. My MIL only went back to when people came over to North America. I'm going back as far as I can conveniently research online. I'm lucky though that they have gotten as far they they have - it puts me generations ahead (behind?) of most people who are doing genealogy.

I've been working through the family lines systematically and seeing what I can add to what they had. When I finish that "first pass" I'll pick the lines that are most interesting to try to track down. When MIL all her research in January, she gave me a dozen or so notebooks with the info on her brick wall lines - that will make it easy to see what she's already eliminated and what she thinks is worth following up.

But I know some of the nieces and nephews are interested, so I need to start getting info online for them. That's why the idea of setting up a website is taking hold. I was close last year before my knee replacements. Now that I am literally back on my feet, I need to get back on that project. Between my family and my husband's I have over 20,000 people in my database. Talk about getting too big!

I'm traditionalist enough to want a hard copy - who knows what might happen in the future. Paper has stood the test of time for the most part, so making paper copies are well worth it. Loose leaf notebooks get unwieldy very fast, unless you limit them to one family or even one generation - then you end up with lots of notebooks. I printed hard copies for my mother and with 3" notebooks, I ended up with at least one of those huge things for each of Mom's grandparents' branches! MIL put her stuff into packet folders, one for each major branch, then subdivided those branches as they got too much. She gave me eight boxes of material filled with those folders!

A alternative possibility is comb bound books - that's the books with the plastic backing with "fingers" that go through rectangular holes in the pages. You can actually buy the device that punches the pages and puts the comb binding through them for not a whole lot (at Officedepot.com they run from under $75 up). It's really easy to pull the comb out, so with your own machine, you can add new pages and rebind the book easily. (My husband works at a place that does printing, so I just have him take stuff to work, but it's not unreasonable to do it at home anymore. My parents have a comb binding machine - I may see if they will let me have it the next time I visit them)

Good laser printers that can duplex - print both sides of pages automatically - are no longer that expensive, especially if you watch for sales - around $150 is a good price to look for. I prefer HP or Brother lasers. Being able to easily print both sides will not only save you money, it will make your books a more manageable size.

The nice thing about the comb bound books is that they look nice and professional - and with a label printer you can add information on the spine of larger ones.