Gosh, I am ust ot describing the problem. If I die next month all my data that I have on living family members will be just thrown out! No one close to me is interested. I need to figure out how hundreds of hours of genealogy work and dozens and dozens of family group sheets can be saved. I would and have neer put anything on a website and those are not a way to save data for , what I hope, will be a future genealogist in the family. I guess you all have younger family members that are interested, I do not. I have literally hundreds of cousins (of one degree or another) all over the US that are descendants. Now LDS only takes info on deceased. I do not know of any repository to give this info to. Maybe others in a like position have never thought beyond their life time and how to protect their valuable research? If anyone has, plase let me know. The datawould be pretty useless with out dates, places, etc, but just can not be given to an historical society, etc without. I do not know of a solution. I have a cousin dying of cancer with the same worries regarding his work. His wife will just throw it out in the trash and neither of his daughters want it. It seems like there should be some sort of an effort to create a repository..some safe way to protect the data of us all for posterity... but what? Or is there somewhere? that is what I want to know. has anyone mae a way to safeguard thir data on people who are now living? Or perhaps few have data on hundreds of people like me as they are not from the prolific breeders my people were (: Thanks, Sharon

This is a comment on a Sept message from Sharon about what to do with one's genealogy papers when no relative is interested, while not wishing to expose living persons listed in them. Perhaps you could collect the information on living relatives into a separate supplement and donate it to a genealogical library with your other materials and a stipulation that this supplement cannot be opened for x number of years after your demise. Perhaps an archivist at a likely institution could offer further guidance. Though it might be time consuming, you could send a letter to living persons explaining your dilemma and asking what you might include about them. Really, vital records and the facts they represent are public records, so people don't really have a right to as much privacy as they think. It may be alright with most people to include at least their names, decade of birth, and state of residence to give future researchers something to go on, but that leaves out everything interesting about them. Once people understand how easy it is to find detailed personal information on them over the Internet from sources that have nothing to do with genealogy, they may not object to some information for genealogy. Some might be fine with their whole biography out there for posterity. Others will be lost to the family history if they demand total privacy, which is an illusion I am not certain one must indulge entirely. Genealogists are historians after all. In any case, it is best to have consent and even to say "listed here with consent" if the person is living. In contemplation of the genealogist's eventual demise, it might be wise to put a reference to special instructions prominently on one's files and with one's papers, in multiples, and not just depend on instructions in a will, as by the time a will is read the papers may have been thrown out. Some relatives of mine recently disposed of almost all their mother's belongings before she was even in the ground, so I think one cannot always count on relatives to do the respectful or logical thing--or even to look at the papers to discern proper disposition. It is surely best to publish or put together a family book at some point (one can always do an addendum or revised edition later as research continues) or to place one's papers during one's lifetime, when that is possible. Just some ideas, belatedly, which I must also keep in mind. We don't live forever and we usually don't know when our time is up. It would be terrible to have one's life work wind up in a landfill. ----- Original Message ----- From: "Sharon Garrett" <skye523@webtv.net> To: <NYMADISO-L@rootsweb.com> Sent: Friday, September 23, 2005 8:45 PM Subject: Re: [NYMADISO] Living relatives > Gosh, I am ust ot describing the problem. If I die next month all my data that I have on living family members will be just thrown out! No one close to me is interested. > I need to figure out how hundreds of hours of genealogy work and dozens and dozens of family group sheets can be saved. > I would and have neer put anything on a website and those are not a way to save data for , what I hope, will be a future genealogist in the family. > I guess you all have younger family members that are interested, I do not. > I have literally hundreds of cousins (of one degree or another) all over the US that are descendants. > Now LDS only takes info on deceased. I do not know of any repository to give this info to. > Maybe others in a like position have never thought beyond their life time and how to protect their valuable research? > If anyone has, plase let me know. > The datawould be pretty useless with out dates, places, etc, but just can not be given to an historical society, etc without. I do not know of a solution. > I have a cousin dying of cancer with the same worries regarding his work. His wife will just throw it out in the trash and neither of his daughters want it. > It seems like there should be some sort of an effort to create a repository..some safe way to protect the data of us all for posterity... but what? Or is there somewhere? that is what I want to know. > has anyone mae a way to safeguard thir data on people who are now living? Or perhaps few have data on hundreds of people like me as they are not from the prolific breeders my people were (: > Thanks, > Sharon >