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Wouldn’t it be fantastic if when next visiting
archives or relatives for your family history research, you didn’t have to pack
pens, papers, albums or library books? After all, how often do pens leak, papers
get torn, or notes fall out of order or go missing? Memorabilia can sometimes
be just too precious to take out of the house and reference material is very
likely to be far too heavy to carry. The answer lies in your hand-held
computer. Used to its full potential, your handy tablet can act as a
micro-office combining multiple functions such as filing cabinet, photograph
album, search tool, scanner, library and much, much more.
By William Hook - WikimediaCommons
Jargon busting
Tablets include iPad, which uses
Apple’s operating system (ios) and Android devices such as Kindle Fire HD,
Samsung Galaxy or Google Nexus. Smartphones have many of the same functions,
but because of their smaller size can be less easy to read and operate – though
they have the advantage of working outside restricted wi-fi areas. With small
variations, any of these devices can facilitate your family history research in
many different ways – tracing your roots need never be such hard work again!
1 Take material with you and keep it safe
Tablets are small and light enough to
carry easily and can be carried in their own special case. Don’t worry about
security. You can set a password to ensure that no one else has access to your
personal information.
2 Take, store and send photographs
The large clear photographs that can
be taken on a tablet are one of their finest features. Store the photographs
(and even short videos) in labelled files on your device for easy retrieval. If
interviewing elderly relatives, there is no better way to jog memories than a
slideshow of images of people, places, family properties and heirlooms.
3 Download family history apps
There are all sorts of apps (applications)
that you can download on to your tablet to help you with your family history
research. These can be found by clicking on the ‘App Store’ icon on your iPad
or the ‘Play Store’ icon on your Android-operated appliance. Search for
relevant apps either by name or by browsing under the keyword(s) ‘genealogy’ or
‘family history’ to see what is currently on offer. Some apps are free and
others require payment by credit card or PayPal account. Some apps will provide
the tools for you to draw up and manage your own family tree on the tablet
itself. Others are databases of potentially vital information (the history of
the British Peerage or collections of scanned old newspapers, for example) and
services (such as how to organise a family reunion).
4 Scan documents
Download an app that will turn your
tablet into a scanner and then make copies of all your important family history
documents: censuses, certificates, letters, and even old photographs. These
will act as a vital back up to the originals. JotNot Scanner (for iPad) and
TinyScan (for iPad or Android) are two such apps available for free.
Staff member retrieves files from the National Archives, Kew (Wikimedia Commons Images)
5 Take notes when you are out and about
You can type notes on your tablet
when visiting archives, or even when talking to family members. On the iPad,
the basic note-making facility ‘Notes’, will be already installed;
Android-operated appliances have the ‘Memo’ facility. Alternatively, you can
download a more sophisticated diary or journal app from the App Store/Play
Store, for example Evernote, which allows you to sync your files across all
your electronic devices. You then sign in to Evernote from any computer to
access and update the files.
Some notepad apps will allow you to
doodle or draw (a useful facility if you want to record gravestone engravings,
or the design of heraldic crests, for example).
Look for alternatives to writing notes by hand
6 Plan research trips
The Assisted–GPS (Global Positioning
Chip) inside most hand-held computers can give you the co-ordinates of exactly
where you are, and (combined with Google Maps accessed through the internet), can
help you to plan research trips to other places. Use the GPS function also to
pinpoint graves and other places important to your history and then pass this
information on to other interested family members. Unless you have ‘3G’
installed on your tablet, you won’t be able to use it to help you navigate
whilst you are actually travelling. Smartphones, however, since they have
on-the-go internet access, can be used in the car, on the train etc.
7 E-readers
Many family history books and
articles can now be purchased online at www.amazon.co.uk as Kindle
downloads. Store these in your Kindle App to read at your leisure. The
advantages of reading from a Kindle rather than a book are many: you can, for
instance, read wherever you are, carry lots of books simultaneously, adjust the
size of the text to suit you, find key words and move easily between different
parts of the book. Other retailers, such as Barnes & Noble, WH Smith and
John Lewis, make their own brand ebook readers.
l iBooks is Apple’s ebook store, www.apple.com/uk/apps/ibooks.
l Googlebooks (www.books.google.co.uk)
allows you to preview books and in some cases read the text of entire volumes
online, if the titles are in the public domain.
l Project Gutenberg (www.gutenberg.org)
provides electronic access to thousands of older books that are in the public
domain.
8 Search & save information
Your tablet is connected to the vast
array of information sources available on the worldwide web. Google
(www.google.co.uk) provides easy access to information and images. Wikipedia (http://en.wikipedia.org)
is a good starting point for answers to all sorts of questions about the past,
but remember to check the reliability of the information. Join one of the
commercial genealogical websites www.ancestry.co.uk; www.findmypast.co.uk
or www.thegenealogist.co.uk) for instant access to information such as
parish records, censuses, birth, marriage and death indexes, military records,
records of travel and migration, electoral rolls, land tax records, historical
surveys, newspaper reports and much more.
l If you see an interesting webpage that
you would like to return to, simply bookmark the page onto your home page, or
‘clip’ the page to your note-taking app. Alternatively, you can take a
screenshot by simply pressing the home button and the power button
simultaneously. Retrieve the information from your photos folder. You can send
copied information to yourself via email and, if necessary, print it out from
your desktop computer at a later point.
l Dropbox, www.dropbox.com, is an
online facility that allows you to save information from your tablet onto an
external server so that it cannot be lost. Your folder can be shared by others
provided you allow them your access details.
9 Join a social networking site
Social networking sites are free and
allow you to share information quickly with lots of other people who are
interested in the same family, place, time period, institution or whatever.
l My Heritage (www.MyHeritage.com)
is a social networking site specifically for family historians.
l Facebook (www.facebook.com)
hosts pages devoted to individual families (listed by surname).
l If there is no page on these sites for
your family already, why not think about creating your own? Read about how to
do this at http://goo.gl/1Y0XFc. You will then be able to post news and
photographs about your own family history and invite other family members
across the world to post theirs.
l Linkedin (www.linkedin.com) is
a social networking site for professionals. Here you can connect with experts
in various aspects of genealogy.
l Twitter (www.twitter.com)
allows you to post very short pieces of news (maximum 140 characters). Here you
can choose to ‘follow’ your favourite family history writers, and other
interested people may choose to ‘follow’ you.
10 Communicate with others
Emails (or messages sent directly
from iPad to iPad in real time) are quick, cheap and easy to send and can be
less embarrassing than a phone call and less formal than a letter. And if you
are feeling particularly bold, why not try out a video messaging service (such
as Skype, Google Hangouts, or – on iPad only – Facetime) to see and talk to
newly-acquired or long-lost relatives, or to send a recorded video message to
them.
This article first appeared in Family Tree Magazine UK
#familyhistory #ancestors #ancestry #technology #android #tablet #ipad #handheldcomputer #familyhistoryresearch
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