Genealogy, or the study of families and their lineages, has become increasingly popular in recent years. This is, in part, due to television shows like BBC’s “Who Do You Think You Are?” and the many websites now available to search for details about your family's history. If you, like many others, have a keen interest in learning more about your distant relatives and family’s past, then you most likely welcome these advances.
The advances made in genealogy are mostly due to one thing: the Internet. The Internet is an incredible resource that you will no doubt already use on a daily basis to check your email, do your banking or read the news. Well, it can now be used to help you trace your family’s history. You can set up a family tree and work on filling in the gaps by signing up for one of these sites.
Genealogy websites have birth, marriage and death records that you can explore to find information on the lives of your distant relatives and enable you to fill in the missing branches on your family tree. You can even search education, work and military records and as well as passport applications, helping you trace family members who may have migrated elsewhere.
Another wonderful advance instigated by the Internet is the fact that you can now find digital copies of original records. This includes digitised copies of wills, civil registration documents and land records. These details can provide even more clues to the puzzle of who your distant relatives were, where they lived and what they did.
All of this is only possible because of the advances that have occurred in genealogy software which allows these websites to function properly. The amount of data involved is immense when you consider the number of individuals involved and the various documents each of them may have attributed to them,. Genealogy websites use an unbelievable amount of computer memory, as digitised copies of documents take up a lot of space.
Software programmes enabling the user to set up family trees have also improved in recent years. If you think to yourself, “I want to find my past you should use the technology available to dramatically improve your results. Some can be quite detailed so if you are new to the notion of genealogy you might want to pick one that is suggested for beginners.
Thus, there’s no need to scroll through dusty collections of records anymore. All you need to do if you’re interested in genealogy is go to one place: the Internet.
Bruce Giles writes for a digital marketing agency. This article has been commissioned by a client of said agency. This article is not designed to promote, but should be considered professional content.
