publish 7140 961206 Publish before you perish +----------------------------------------------------------------------+ Publish Before You Perish +----------------------------------------------------------------------+ A JewishGen InfoFile By George Arnstein Wsshington, D.C. April 16, 1994, slightly rev. Nov 96 Publish Before You Perish A Presentation for the CPAFUG, Kensington, MD My message is simple: Gather your data, organize them and publish, NOW. Of course you are not ready to publish; nobody ever is when you think about it. There are always additional ancestors to be found, while contemporaries die, marry, divorce and have children. The story is unending and you have to put a stop to it, sometime. The benefits of going ahead now are these: 1. You will have the good feeling of actually producing something, results you can show off, send out for corrections, and as gifts. 2. You can experiment with different formats to see if you like them. 3. You will have something to share with other family members who may feel inspired to offer additional data to improve your version. 4. Your data will finally be pulled together in a single place which means You can spot your own gaps and errors and omissions. 5. If you drop dead your accumulated work will not perish with you. 6. You have something to share, to pass on to relevant libraries and depositories which may get you new data in return. When I say "publish" I have several meanings in mind. Let me illustrate. Book: For my paternal line my data are in good shape, so much so that I have published them in a laser-printed book of more than a hundred pages. I set myself a deadline and stuck to it. Data sent to me after Dec. 31, 1990 did not make it into the publication. There is a cover, a table of contents, an abstract, an index to the 1500+ names. I have sent copies to relatives and several libraries and am ready for another reprinting of about 25 copies. I also have prepared a list of corrections and additions to overcome the errors I made; this list, properly dated and identified, is ready for distribution. Software: PAF and Word Perfect, with heavy use of DESCEND, a free utility to PAF, now updated as shareware. Draft: For my maternal line there are now about 4000 names, plus some narrative material which currently exists in an edition of about ten copies. This limited or preliminary edition is more like "Work in Progress" but it exists. If I drop dead today, the data are organized and make sense. They came out of my printer and are really a working draft and it is so identified. Even the title page reflects this: "Notes for a Family History" although in fact it is more than notes. Software is the same as above although I am currently experimenting with Barbara Bennett's PAFABILITY shareware, and Kinwrite (commerical) to get better or more informative descendancy charts in the Register format. So far I prefer Pafability. That's my message for today: Organize what you have and produce a big book or a limited working draft of only a dozen copies. Now for some details. 1. There are claims that various programs will write your family history for you. Well, maybe. The trick is to write your entries in such a way that relevant entries then end with notes which carry the narrative. That's easier said than done. A friend asked me to read and edit his Roots III history and jointly we learned that the program lives up to its reputation as being very sophisticated and difficult to use well. His draft certainly was not clean enough for publication. Some of the same features are accessible to us with PAF and GEDCOM. Do some experimenting by trying PAFABILITY, Barbara Bennett's new program which functions much like the Roots III output, or a much more expensive program, Kinwrite, which also has great possibilities. Further there is Brother's Keeper, DOS and WIN shareware which offers similar features toward generating a family history. 2. I decided to separate my narrative, the first 50 pages, from the enormously long descendancy chart, with name index, which makes up the second 100+ pages of my paternal family history. I am now experimenting with a combined version. My advice, once again, is to experiment to see what works best for you. 3. In an earlier presentation to this group (1990) I passed out a sugggested table of contents for a family history. Let me repeat it very briefly here, always keeping in mind that you need to write your own history and make your own choices: o Title page o Abstract -- very important, no more than 1 page. List all major family names, preferably with geographic links. o Table of Contents o Acknowledgments, dedication, preface o Methodology, a discussion of how and why you made your decisions. o Index of names at the end,plus index of places etc. if you have the energy. o Maps as appropriate o Photos, as you wish. As for the narrative: Start with yourself, or your parents, and ascend. OR start with one or two patriarchs, and descend. (Matriarchs are OK too) By all means set the scene: Ancestral town or village, path of migration Here is where you tell anecdotes; if they are not documented you can still use them but be careful to label them correctly for what they are. Go easy on the repetitive recitation of who was born where etc. because your computer-generated charts ought to carry all of these details. Try for a concluding or summary chapter, although it is hard to find great significance in most family histories. Most of us have few horse thieves, few generals, few truly outstanding members who affected "History." So your conclusion may be something like they were good people who were kind to dumb animals and cultivated their garden with diligence (which is something to brag about indeed.) Summary advice: Be accurate; document your sources; try for clean, grammatical writing; proofread meticulously; find an editor and heed his or her advice. As for money: Prepare some kind of budget, then double it. Use a low quality printer for drafts to be copied and circulated, but use a high resolution printer, probably a laser, if you want a more appealing printed page. Number your pages and prepare a name index. And don't forget to allow for postage and mailing costs.... Add a hidden cost: Once you have a "book" people want copies and it becomes costly to give them away. To repeat: Gather your data, organize them and publish, NOW. Good luck -- and show off your results at the December meeting.# Adapted from my article in Heritage Quest #40, May-June 1992, and mildly updated Nov. 1996. --- Copyright 1996, George Arnstein Stored for download with the author's permission. All rights reserved. Inquiries to -------------- [16Dec96ga]bik JewishGen, Inc. +----------------------------------------------------------------------+