If you are researching your family history and would like to share it with others in your family, here is an idea for a fun project that makes a wonderful gift. Sharing family history is a wonderful thing, and family members always appreciate the work that goes into a genealogy related item like a scrapbook or a family history book. Creating those family treasures takes time and effort, especially if you want to make multiple copies to share with the whole family. A digital scrapbook can be a wonderful way to share photos, stories, family tree charts, and other items of interest with as many people as you wish to create cds for.
There are programs out there for creating digital scrapbooks or, if you prefer, you can set up your own as a series of PDF files. You may want to spend some time playing around with programs and formats because it is important to choose something that you are comfortable using which produces page layouts that look the way that you want them to. Also, decide how your scrapbook will be organized and what type of information it will contain. Will it focus on a specific family line, a couple and their descendants, or another type of family group? The choice is yours, but it is important to decide how you want to organize the scrapbook and whose information will go in it before you start selecting and inputting the actual information.
Once you have decided on what program you will use to create your scrapbook and how you will organize the information, you get to sift through your research materials to locate the photos, charts, stories, newspaper clippings, and other items of interest that you would like to include in your scrapbook. When you have your materials assembled, scan, type, design, and create to your heart’s content. Have some fun with different page layouts, fonts, and backgrounds. When the digital scrapbook looks the way you want it to, it is time to create and package those cds and share them with your family.
Photo by xandert on morguefile.com.