Pay It Forward
We each have gifts, abilities, and specific knowledge that can contribute to our communities. I have benefited so much from genealogy that I think it’s part of my duty to give back a little to the people and field who have so enriched my life. Following are a few ways to become more involved and to “pay it forward.”
Volunteer to help at your local genealogical or historical society. These societies can benefit from nearly any professional skill you have from office and computer skills to accounting and organizational skills.
Organize a genealogy project that involves a genealogical society, a school, even a scout troop. Are all the cemetery monuments in the county documented? What about religious records?
Determine what records are available in your church. What is yo ur church’s policy in allowing researchers access to its records? How can the records be made more widely available? What preservation efforts are being made to ensure that future generations will have access to them?
Identify the regional or statewide agency responsible for archiving records in your area and volunteer to serve on a committee. The archivists need to be aware of the needs and concerns of the genealogy community.
Communicate with your local librarian. Talk with the reference room librarian about books that would be helpful to beginning genealogists. Is there a repository for people to contribute family files? Offer to help answer genealogy-related correspondence that comes to the library.
Involve your place of business. Is your employer sensitive to its place in the history of the area? How has its presence impacted the community? Compile a company history that will bring attention to its role in the area.
Organize or participate in a historical reenactment. A lot of energy is spent on reenactments of Revolutionary War and Civil War battles–even Wild West shoots-outs are popular. Is there an important historic event that could symbolize the unification of your community? Organize a historical reenactment in your area so others will see the value of their community’s past.
Offer to help others with their research. The individuals who offer their time to do quick look-ups at the local libraries and in their personal libraries deserve a special thank you. There are lots of opportunities to be of help to other researchers through the USGen-Web pages.
Almost any hobby, skill, or occupation can contribute to genealogy in some way. Do something you enjoy doing, but put a historical twist on the project. If you love to cook, collect family recipes from local families and publish them. If you’re an avid photographer, take some pictures of the area and its historic homes and make them available online. Do you love the out-of-doors? Offer to help locate and catalog the cemeteries in the area.
Do you have computer expertise? Contact public records agencies with your concerns about maintaining older records. What is the agency doing to ensure that as software and machines go out of date, older electronic records are being preserved in a manner that permits accessibility in electronic, not just paper, formats? You may want to give your old computer to a local society or help the local librarian set up a genealogy-related search menu on the library website. Maybe you could offer to do a workshop for family historians about searching the Internet.
Preserve the photographic history of your community. Organize a photograph day. Duplicate as many documented family albums as possible, for families as well as for local archiving. Emphasize the need for older pictures of the area. You’ll be amazed at what’s in all those albums around town.
Facilitate ethnic group research. Is there an ethnic group in your area that is not as involved in genealogy as it could be? Offer to help organize a special interest group as part of the local genealogical society.
Involve a child in research basics. Encourage your local historical society to publish a brochure for kids, or give a talk to teachers on how to use genealogy as a research project or history lesson. Take your children and grandchildren to the library to help them start thinking about genealogy and how it is accomplished. Show them a document with their ancestors’ name in it. Get them excited.
Tape-record your children as they tell you about the important parts of their day. You don’t have to be an adult to start your own oral history. Encourage your children to keep a journal.
Be careful with the records you handle in public and private facilities. Leave them in a state they can be shared and researched by others who will follow you .
Create the documentation of your own life with a journal. Then do some catchup by writing or recording the memories and stories of your childhood. Write a letter to your grandchildren telling them what your life was like as a child.
Preserve and document your own family pictures. Get them out of the self-adhesive binders and put them in archival-quality binders. If possible, scan them and make duplicate sets to give to your relatives for holiday presents. They will become a treasured heirloom.
Publish the research you’ve done. It’s only valuable if you get it out of your filing cabinets. Don’t put it off. The project will force you to organize your notes so you can feel a sense of completion and success for all the research you’ve done.
These are only a handful of ways you can give back to both the genealogy community and to your local community. In return, you’ll learn from the project you’ve decide to take on, and likely you’ll be excited to begin another project once you complete the first one. Pay it forward. This way, each of us can do our small part in ensuring that future generations will have the records and finding aids they need to conduct research in a productive manner.
Roseann Reinemuth Hogan, Ph.D., has been researching her family history since 1978. Her special interests include oral histories and social history.
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