So for a while now I have been thinking about building up a family tree and recently I disocovered some family heirlooms aka negatives from my parents collection thats 30-40 yrs old so I have decided to convert the pictures all into digital format and link them to the family tree.
Since I think it would be a lot of fun to get the younger people involved I am thinking about buying a package that a 10-12 yr old can use to build up a decent Family tree and include digital pictures and notes in it.
Also since my mom would be the main source of information on the family history and so on, I was thinking of perhaps recording a couple of coversations with her on my linages and passing it onto my the kids to add to the family tree. I figured it would take a few years to really get a decent picture of the family, since its hard to have a hard long talk just about family all at once (plus there are plenty of sensitive issues such as deaths in the family that need to be included)
I have an HP scanner with a negatives scanning attachment but when I used that the digital negatives didn’t really come out that well (rather dark and colorless, albeit they are rather old) so I am not sure if its hardware or software I need to fix or take the negatives to a professional studio to have them “cleaned up”
All said I figured if I put in about 10 hours a month into it, it should be ready before my parents 45 anniversary.
Ok now that you know the project, I need peoples help as follows:
- Have any of you used a family tree software package and do you have any suggestions?
- Any suggestions on what I may need to do to get the negatives and slides fixed up and stored digitally?
- Any other suggestions you would like to add?
My primary reason for this is having lived in various places, most of my family linkages are just based on what my parents and other older relatives tell me. That knowledge is slowly been lost especially after my grand parents passed away a while back and it is an important part of what I would like to share with others in the future. So this hopefully will help me build a knowledgebase that can be shared in the future with others.