A rewarding activity is to share your research with others. This can be your immediate family or other researchers who share your ancestry. Here are some types of online collaboration:
Social Networking for Genealogy
Geni. Geni is a free online tool for understanding and staying in touch with your family. Geni lets you create a family tree through a simple interface. You can expand your tree by adding relatives' email addresses. They will be invited to join your tree and can add other relatives. Your tree will continue to grow as relatives invite other relatives.
Genealogy Forums
You can find all sorts of information at these Forums. They are definitely worth browsing. Two that are particularly useful are:
- Ancestry.com Message Boards.
The Ancestry.com and RootsWeb message boards are now combined into this board.
- GenForum Message Boards.
Other Options
Surname Community. Here you can join with your relatives around the globe in building and contributing to your surname tree. Click here for more information on the Surname Community at Ancestry.com.
OneGreatFamily.com. OneGreatFamily is a cooperative effort between you and the rest of the world. It is an online genealogical service which allows people to combine their knowledge and data to build one huge, shared family tree database. OneGreatFamily is more than a simple collection of different family trees. It is actually linking all of the family trees together into one great family.
Also see
- Genealogy Software for options in organizing your research on your personal computer.
- Using Census Tracts to obtain birth dates and locations.
Genealogy on the Internet
If you know ancestors back into the mid-1800s, you have a much better chance of finding someone who has been researched previously. This is where the Active Searches page of this website comes in handy. Go to genealogy search for an overview.