In the modern era, every family and local community can cultivate its own history, endowing living people with meanings inherited from the people of the past, by means of today's computer-based information and communication technologies. A new profession is emerging, family historians, serving the wider public by assisting in collection and analysis of fascinating data, by teaching talented amateur historians, and by producing complete narratives. Essential are the skills and technologies required to preserve and connect photos, movies, videos, diaries, memoirs, correspondence, artefacts and even architecture such as homes. Online genealogical services are well established sources of official government records, but usually not for recent decades, and not covering the valuable records of legal, medical, and religious organizations. Information can be shared and interpreted by family members through oral history interviews, social media, and online private archives such as wikisand shared file depositories.

This book explores a wide variety of online information sources and achieves coherence by documenting and interpreting the history of a particular extended American family on the basis of 9 decades of movies and videos, 17 decades of photographs, and centuries of documents. Starting now, any family may begin to preserve their current experiences for the historians of the future, but this will require social as well as technical innovations. This book is the essential resource, providing the fundamental principles, effective methods, and fascinating questions required to make our past live again.

Internet-based information technology transforms history from the legends of kings to faithful accounts of normal families, giving new meaning to our own lives and those of coming generations. Shows how the same creative force seen in the technological revolution of the 1990's can be revived to create information systems that serve families and thus humanity more fundamentally. Explains how a new technology-supported occupation can be created, family historian, who would teach classes, mentor amateurs, and take on projects for interested families. In these pages, the example of an especially well documented professional American family, with photographs dating from 1847 and home movies from 1929, illustrates how a great diversity of materials can be integrated into a meaningful narrative. In areas ranging from interview methods, to community archives, to online social media, this book makes clear the utility of social science for family history.

Autorentext

William Sims Bainbridge is an experienced researcher on the history and sociology of space development and a leader in developing new computational methods of questionnaire administration and analysis, as well as a writer who knows how to communicate clearly to readers interested in spaceflight or science and technology more broadly. The author holds a Ph.D. in Sociology from Harvard University.

Inhalt
Connections between Family Data and Wider Meanings.- Documenting and Digitally Presenting Family Photographs.- Evolution from Home Movies to Videos in Social Media.- Producing Coherent Narratives from Family Diaries and Memoirs.- Exploratory Oral History Interviews of Family Members.- Information Technologies for Cultivating Domestic Artifacts.- Virtual Word Representation of Family Homes.- Applications of Online Censuses and Other Official Records.- Recording Contemporary Family History through Social Media.- Integration of Family Records into Community History.