Suggestions for "modern" / next-gen family history books?

[KellyE]

I'm wanting to use my Reunion file to go beyond a traditional genealogy book. Something that engages readers (not everyone is a fam-hist geek like me)... something that draws them in... modernizes the format. Informative and usable... not meant to gather dust. I've seen so many doing just that, over the years, in genealogy libraries. Thinking maybe interactive beyond just links in a pdf... QR codes? I dunno.

(I've read that there's a researcher named Marlis Glaser Humphrey who is "the" authority on next-gen family history publishing, but there's nothing I can find by her online to read more about what that might mean to her...)

Of course I know "make a website" is an option, but I really want to find a way to do something fresh with the actual, printed, book format.

Does anyone know of any resources online (or books I can order from Amazon...) talking about re-thinking the genealogy-book for the 21st century-plus? Or examples I should look at? I'd rather not reinvent the wheel if there are innovators out there from whom I might learn.

Thanks in advance!!

[Susan Park]

I've been thinking about this very thing for quite a while now and have no actual, proven solutions. However, some things I've tried already include PDFs with clickable links. For example, I've got hundreds of old letters in which people describe things ("we bought a new Studebaker," for instance) and I have inserted a link to an online photo of what that car might have looked like. In other letters there were joking references to then-current affairs (new freezers and Bess Truman, for example) and I googled them and sometimes found Wikipedia articles to explain which I could link up to the phrases in the letter. None of those worked well enough--still too many words and not enough pictures for my non-reading family.

My latest attempt was with old family photos. I've got thousands of them so I used the Caption field in the photo's metadata to write the story of each photo. Took forever! I used Adobe Bridge and then uploaded everything to Flickr.com

Ideas I'm looking at now: Reading those letters out loud and having pictures of the letter and maybe of the author and recipient showing on screen while the audio saves the listener from having to actually read the letter. Also, while all genealogy programs claim to produce ready-to-print books, none of them are interesting. They don't "draw you in," as you said. That requires writing the real story on you own and fitting it into the canned report. I generally use Word and import the book report from Reunion to Word. Some people use Scrivener and other such programs.

I'm looking in to making interactive e-books, and also how to make mini-documentaries. All of these things sound great to me, but all lack the permanence of a real book. Will anyone continue to update the programs needed to maintain these new-fashioned works after I'm gone? Will they pay the annual subscriptions for the sites where I have posted things already? Probably not. Maybe you have to do both. Print a traditional boring book for posterity AND make documentaries, interactive e-books, movies, etc to get the current crowd interested.

Since a lot of family stories/lore/traditions are often fictionalized versions of the facts, I'm thinking also of just picking certain ancestors and events and writing them up as short novels. I'd love to hear other ideas.

[KirkS]

EPUBs are easily made with Pages and/or other macOS Applications.

EPUBs can contain multimedia content, links to websites, etc.

[KellyE]

Thank you, Kirk and Susan!

Yes, I've thought about adding links and content beyond the usual names/dates/stories to an e-book... I guess I'm in the same boat as Susan, wondering what more people have thought of, that could be done to push the format, electronically but especially the printed format—and as Susan said, also make sure it's evergreen/ has permanence, so that if Flickr or another website vanishes one day the history will still be usable.

I'm sure all of us who've been doing this for a while have a shelf full of once-and-done books (and have known family members who don't even give such books that once-over)... all ideas for how to engage people we know now, AND those we'll never meet, decades from now, are welcome!!

[epona]

Even though some of the new programs/websites are exciting, you are right - will they be there in 10 years? And things like that usually involve fees. Nobody in my family is remotely interested in genealogy. I think DNA testing has done more to bring attention back to genealogy in recent years than the dusty books.

I've been thinking about the trends of attention span getting less, more going to visuals/sound. But, like you say, how to deal with this and still get the family to want to look at the family tree they came from.

Just an old fashioned fact book won't cut it anymore, even though I know how hard it was to gather those facts!

I think fiction would have to be incorporated in order to bring out what people are really interested in - how children were taught then, falling in love, having to make a hope chest, making the wedding dress, how many miles did he walk to court her, how they were able to get their first piece of land, the trials and tribulations of wagon migration, etc. I was thinking of how young people (at least girls) like to record things nowdays, and I was reminded of scrapbooking - how women love to collect pictures, decorate them, place all kinds of stickers on the page (flowers, cute animals) as they journal about the picture. Another thing is diaries, which were really about the same thing. So I think it's more the emotional and situation experiences they went through.

Since we've had the pandemic, I think more can now relate to, say, the 1918 epidemic and others in history, the fear and panic and sadness. Also, as more are now experiencing natural disasters than ever before, fires, quakes, tornadoes and other calamities would be more real. News clippings, stories about land fights and lawsuits, cars back then, funny 'for sale' postings, articles pushing enlistment, war stories, political arguments, men's styles might be more interesting to men. While women's dress styles, quaint medicine ads, and the 'who visited who' columns, and golden anniversary posts would more interest the ladies.

A fictional digital 'dear diary' with stickers and pics of real things would probably appeal to young women. I've seen ads from time to time over on facebook about companies that will provide formats for something like this, but I think personal journal programs to create these things for yourself might do just as well - adding in your own artwork, etc. CDs I hear only last so many years, so no telling what "the new thing" is going to be in 5 years as everything is changing so fast right now.

A vid showing great-gran making her famous biscuit or other recipie or taking about how she was courted, etc. done creatively would probably go over well. Or a vid of a group-talk between sisters (as they sit out on the porch or talk around the table) about their growing up experiences.

Those were my thoughts upon seeing your post, hope it gives you ideas.

[KellyE]

Thanks Epona—Yes, you have given me some good ideas! I really appreciate it!

[AlPrunty]

EPUBs are easily made with Pages and/or other macOS Applications.

EPUBs can contain multimedia content, links to websites, etc.

Problem with publishing things like this is ten (more like two) years down the road will the website still be there and if so will the links stay the same? It sounds like a great idea but is it really? One software that I use to use on that <cough> other computer platform <cough> would publish to an interactive CD ROM which is fine, but modern computers don't have CD Roms anymore... who would have thought a CD rom would go the way of the Dodo.

Whatever you call "Next Gen" will be old Gen by the time the Next Gen gets old enough to use it. I used to be happy when My cousin gifted me with his 15 inch Quad Core i9 MacBook Pro until I got to test drive a new M2 Mac. The times are ALWAYS changing my friend.

Allen

[William Shaw]

The times are ALWAYS changing my friend.

Allen

And thank you Leister for sticking with Reunion!