On Sun, 20 Jan 2008 16:38:28 -0600, Judy Arnold <judith@omuonline.net> wrote: >What part of ancestry are you using to create the book?? Could you >please elborate. I have >always wanted to do a book but have never felt like I knew how to >"produce" it. >From the description on Amazon it sounds to me like the Ancestry books are just data dumps- Pick a surname- Chapter 1; Elbrecht's in US Censuses Probably listed by year with no regard to time or place. Chapter 2; Immigrant Elbrecht's; A copy/paste of all the Elbrechts on shiplists [and so on] My suggestion to 'get an Ancestry subscription and make your own' may have been misleading. The Ancestry subscription just gives you access to all the data that is contained in the $30 book that the OP asked about. If you wanted to do the same 'data dump' you could do it cheaper than $30- but few of us would be interested. [and you could get the same information for all the names in your database for the annual fee] The subscriber's job is to sort out what info is pertinent to their family- and hopefully integrate a whole lot more sources to their research. Then they enter it into their favorite genealogy program. All the program's I've seen have 'book' [often called report] making capabilities of some sort. The one I use most often, with Steed's Brother's Keeper, is called an "Ancestor Ahnentafel Book". If I use my kids as the first folks it creates an rtf file that I can edit in Word. I can ask it to be brief and include just the basics- B-D-M, siblings - or I can ask it to include all notes and children of their ancestors. [just as an example I tried this this morning- the complete listings create a 230 page book before editing- the brief version, no notes, only ancestors & sibs, is 29 pages.] Once created I can edit the 'book' in Word. BK makes an excellent index of the people, but I might add some things to the index like keywords to stories I find interesting. Since I'm probably doing this for a particular audience, usually a group of less than 10- I can customize it any way I want. I use word to create chapters labeled 'Parent', 'Grand Parents', . . . . '13th Great Grand Parents'. I write an single page intro directed at my mini-audience - [usually begging for corrections and additions, and maybe drawing their attention to some new tidbit I think they'll find interesting. I also explain how the ahnentafel numbers work so if they are browsing through they can move back and forth by family.] Then I take the file to Staples and ask them to print and bind them. The bindings at my local Staples range from clear floppy pages to hard cover, full color covers. I've gone with the cheaper bindings on the assumption that I'm not done yet. The last one I did was 130 pages of my father's ancestors. With the floppy bindings, I got 5 books for $12.50 each- and they were ready in 3 hours. That was *my* point- Cheryl seems to spend a lot more time playing editor than I so she will probably have something good to add - or disagree with.<g> I probably shouldn't ask because I doubt I'll be interested in learning a new Word processing program- but for the benefit of anyone who hasn't gotten used to a program. . . What program does anyone else do their editing in? I know some folks like making pdf's - does anyone use Publisher [why?] - What are Word's shortcomings? Jim

Jim Elbrecht wrote: > On Sun, 20 Jan 2008 16:38:28 -0600, Judy Arnold <judith@omuonline.net> > wrote: > > >>What part of ancestry are you using to create the book?? Could you >>please elborate. I have >>always wanted to do a book but have never felt like I knew how to >>"produce" it. > > > From the description on Amazon it sounds to me like the Ancestry books > are just data dumps- Pick a surname- > Chapter 1; Elbrecht's in US Censuses > Probably listed by year with no regard to time or place. > Chapter 2; Immigrant Elbrecht's; > A copy/paste of all the Elbrechts on shiplists > [and so on] > > My suggestion to 'get an Ancestry subscription and make your own' may > have been misleading. The Ancestry subscription just gives you > access to all the data that is contained in the $30 book that the OP > asked about. If you wanted to do the same 'data dump' you could do > it cheaper than $30- but few of us would be interested. [and you could > get the same information for all the names in your database for the > annual fee] > > The subscriber's job is to sort out what info is pertinent to their > family- and hopefully integrate a whole lot more sources to their > research. Then they enter it into their favorite genealogy program. > > All the program's I've seen have 'book' [often called report] making > capabilities of some sort. The one I use most often, with Steed's > Brother's Keeper, is called an "Ancestor Ahnentafel Book". If I > use my kids as the first folks it creates an rtf file that I can edit > in Word. I can ask it to be brief and include just the basics- > B-D-M, siblings - or I can ask it to include all notes and children of > their ancestors. [just as an example I tried this this morning- the > complete listings create a 230 page book before editing- the brief > version, no notes, only ancestors & sibs, is 29 pages.] > > Once created I can edit the 'book' in Word. BK makes an excellent > index of the people, but I might add some things to the index like > keywords to stories I find interesting. Since I'm probably doing > this for a particular audience, usually a group of less than 10- I can > customize it any way I want. > > I use word to create chapters labeled 'Parent', 'Grand Parents', . . . > . '13th Great Grand Parents'. I write an single page intro directed > at my mini-audience - [usually begging for corrections and additions, > and maybe drawing their attention to some new tidbit I think they'll > find interesting. I also explain how the ahnentafel numbers work so > if they are browsing through they can move back and forth by family.] > > Then I take the file to Staples and ask them to print and bind them. > The bindings at my local Staples range from clear floppy pages to hard > cover, full color covers. I've gone with the cheaper bindings on > the assumption that I'm not done yet. The last one I did was 130 > pages of my father's ancestors. With the floppy bindings, I got 5 > books for $12.50 each- and they were ready in 3 hours. > > That was *my* point- Cheryl seems to spend a lot more time playing > editor than I so she will probably have something good to add - or > disagree with.<g> > > I probably shouldn't ask because I doubt I'll be interested in > learning a new Word processing program- but for the benefit of anyone > who hasn't gotten used to a program. . . > What program does anyone else do their editing in? I know some folks > like making pdf's - does anyone use Publisher [why?] - What are > Word's shortcomings? > > Jim (G) Since I don't have Ancestry, and have never even looked at their book options, my comment was addressed at the 8000-page book no one would bind. (g) The functional binding limit is roughly 1064 pages of "normal weight" paper. This is about 3-inches thick. You wouldn't want to try to hold onto a bigger book anyway. (g) [Note to the obsessive: yes, heavier weight paper will lower the page count and thinner paper will raise it, and enamel will lower it, archival will lower it, method of binding will lower it ... 1064 is for hand-sewn traditional hardcover binding.] For-my-sins, for my many sins, yes, I've done a lot of editing. :( The first important thing anyone planning a book project needs to know is: if you're doing a 12-generation, all descendants book, and you've got more than a couple thousand people /OR/ you've got copious source citations with signicant chunks of quotations on each and/or you've lots of narrative in the notes/history fields ... you need a DOCUMENT processor, not a WORD processor. The difference is in the size of the document it'll handle. Neither WP nor Word were happy with an 8-meg document. WordPerfect is somewhat easier on the nerves than WORD, because it gives you more typographical details on the layout and presentation. REVEAL CODES tells you a lot more than the paragraphsign. Most programs will produce a book, either of descendants or of ancestors. IF you've been very careful and clearly marked what you want to print and what you don't, AND IF the program does what it's supposed to, there shouldn't be much editing required. In my case, the second half of that was False, so I had a choice of NO notes or ALL notes; I then had to edit out most of the ALL notes. (Wish I'd thought to just GED the Tagged notes into a clean database ...) I'm finding that most my subsequent "books" have been The Ancestors of... it gives my nephews ALL their ancestry, not just what they share with my son. It's also the Ahnentafel format which is a little easier to explain (g), and easy to expand on editorially. I do these usually for either Christmas or birthdays every few years. Recently, I began putting them in paper, pocket-binders; I used to just print a fancy cover page, staple them together, roll each one up and tie it with a piece of ribbon. Once you print out three generations of family, say the three generations from 1880 forward?, you'll see why copious citations and annotations are unpopular with those who publish. I can have four pages of documentation for three lines of fact. (See also, Dick Pence's article that includes Bob Sawyer's "Cousin Lucy", now under discussion in soc.gen.computing) Cheryl