GIVING TREE FOR GENEALOGISTS by Myra Vanderpool Gormley, CG You know what we tell our children and grandchildren: "It is better to give than to receive." Here are some ways that we genealogists can give back to this wonderful hobby of ours. 1. Donate genealogy books, CDs and periodicals to our libraries. 2. Give our time and talents and provide financial support to local genealogical and historical societies. They depend on us. 3. Index a genealogy book or records compilation -- especially old county histories. 4. Share our knowledge about research in a particular locality by posting the information on Web pages, message boards, or to genealogy newsgroups. 5. Help a newbie online discover the joy of genealogy. 6. Make copies of those family photographs and old home movies to share with our cousins. 7. Create a family cookbook of old favorite recipes to give as a present to family members. 8. Compile a family history and publish it in 2003. 9. If that is too large a project, compile what we have on one of our grandparents or great-grandparents and share that chapter of the family history with our relatives. 10. Start or join a surname mailing list and share our data with others. 11. Update our GEDCOMs to make sharing easier and faster in 2003. 12. Create a personal home page on the Web and post our genealogy data to make it easily accessed by online genealogists. 13. Join the "Friends of ______" (state archives and libraries). 14. Compile some (any) records that a genealogist might use and publish them -- in print or electronically or both. 15. Do random deeds of kindness to librarians, archivists, county clerks and other officials with whom we come in contact this year in pursuit of our roots. ["Giving Tree for Genealogists" first appeared in MISSING LINKS, Volume 2, No. 2, 19 December 1997.] Previously published in MISSING LINKS, Vol. 7, No. 51, 24 December 2002 http://www.petuniapress.com