Question about Documentation and Records

[vantaykay]

Since I am new to genealogy, well not very new about a year. I have a question about documents and copies of records. Can I put a copy of a census or birth certificate on my tree and when I finally publish a book about my ancestors can I have all the documents in the book, is this allowed? Or does copyright prevent you from doing this?
If so then why waste money buying copies of these documents? Like I have copies of my grandfathers will and also copies of army papers of another relative.

[SarahND]

Hello vantaykay,
I can't speak to the copyright question, but will say that in my opinion it is never a waste of money to get copies of a document. More often than not, there is quite a bit more information on the primary document than in an abstract or index record. It can be impossible to know if you even have the right person without looking at the details in the original. Just my two cents

All the best,
Sarah

[vantaykay]

But then what do you do with them when you no longer need them? You end up with files of documents! paper as well as computerized.

[SarahND]

I haven't yet got to the point of no longer needing them, I guess! Can't really imagine that. I'm always going over things again and finding things I missed the first time. Since they're all on a laptop, they don't take physical space and I can carry them around with me when I go to archives, etc. in case I need to check something.
But maybe that's just me...


Sarah

[LesleyB]

Hi Sarah
It's not just you. I think holding on to the original is essential - I too find myself going back to check and often picking up some small detail I had missed first time around.

Best wishes
Lesley

[Russell]

I'll chime in with agreement especially with Sarah's comment about reviewing things. My wife pores over all our paper records and is constantly putting together snippets which can only be gleaned by putting two or three originals side by side and comparing the entries.
We currently have 14 large lever arch files with a mass of original documents, cemetery entries,Wills, poor law copies and book extracts. I wouldn't be able to carry out an equivalent review even though all (or most) of that data is on my computer.
Keep your notes on all those dead-end searches you have carried out. Sometimes they too can suddenly slot into place in your family social network even though they may not relate to direct family lines.

Russell

[Currie]

Hello vantaykay,

Do you intend to publish the family history as a paper book, and what will be the page size? It may be a good idea to look at other paper family histories that have images of documents included and see how successful they were in getting the message across. If it is to be a relatively small book then the image of a full census or certificate page will be too small to be readable.

Transcription of the image in a story form will probably be more successful. If you’re going to include images make them photographs of the people in the tree. Many family history documents contain very little relevant information compared to the amount of real estate they occupy, and what’s there can fit into relatively few lines of print.

By publish do you mean something that will be on sale in the shops or on the internet or otherwise generally available. If it’s only for private distribution amongst family members, and if it was me, I would put in it whatever took my fancy. If it’s to be made available to the general public then you’ll have to carefully read up the copyright rules of whatever organisation made the records available.

Every country has its own set of copyright laws. The UK’s has been described as “frankly preposterous” and there was to be a review, but I don’t know the outcome of that, or if it was to include Crown Copyright (which has much of the “frankly preposterous” about it). http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-politics-11695416

Whatever you write and publish will be just another step away from the documents you’re thinking about discarding. If governments had thrown out documents that were no longer needed there would be no archives or record offices today. Remember what happened in Ireland and elsewhere.

The more compact your family history is the more chance of it surviving the ravages of time and uninterested relatives who don’t have the space for a truckload. The written history plus the truckload, in digital or paper form, is probably the ideal. The trouble with published paper histories is if you find something new the day after publication.

When it comes to advice on writing and publishing a family history Google is your friend. https://www.google.com.au/webhp?complet ... +copyright

All the best,
Alan

[AndrewP]

Hi vantakay,

Have a read at the following webpage on the ScotlandsPeople website regarding copyright of their material.

http://www.scotlandspeople.gov.uk/conte ... aspx?r=543

All the best,

AndrewP

[vantaykay]

Thanks Alan and Andrew, I was considering publishing a book online. I have no decedents to pass it onto. I am on Ancestry.com and I noticed that you can put a small picture of say the census on your tree. Now I do not know if when it comes to publishing your book on Ancestry.com that those pictures will be included.
I know with pictures that I have taken off the internet of different places where my ancestors use to live, I have to add a note were I got them from. What I was just think about now, the governments should allow genealogists to place documents in their published works. At least this will preserve them, I think the more places you have the documents the better. We all know about the fires that have destroyed documents and now they are lost for ever. And another thing all the documents I collect will end up in the dustbin, there is no one to take over.

[Ina]

Hi,

Several years ago I was putting together a book on one of my lines. I wanted to include the birth, marriage and death records that I had downloaded from Scotlandspeople. I contacted SP and asked if I would be allowed to publish those documents in a book and they said that as long as the book was not going to be for sale it would be OK. I was only planning to make about 10 copies to give to relatives.

Ina