Along those same lines, just to show that different organizations have different policies, here are the instructions from the New England Historic Genealogical Society: NEHGS encourages our members and friends to consider donating their genealogical materials. Donations of books and other published material (family histories, periodicals, etc.) relevant to genealogy or local history are greatly appreciated. These gifts will be added to our Research Library as new titles or replacement copies. If they are not needed in the collection, they may be sold to benefit the NEHGS Book Preservation Fund. We also seek donations of digital files (preferably PDF or Word documents) for addition to the NEHGS Digital Library and Archive. Many researchers own unique manuscript items. Donations of such items to NEHGS form the basis of our amazing manuscript collection. Many researchers may wish to plan for the eventual disposition of their family collections. NEHGS is the perfect place to preserve and protect your family treasures, and make them available to future generations of family history researchers. What NEHGS Collects Books and other published material (family histories, periodicals, etc.) in print or electronic form Handwritten and typed family histories and charts Material with vital statistic data such as Bible records, town, church, and cemetery records Genealogical papers compiled by genealogical researchers and authors Family association collections Original primary source documents donated individually and in collections of family papers Donating Materials to NEHGS NEHGS, like many institutions, prefers manuscript gifts to include the transfer of any rights a donor may possess in the original material. This is requested so that NEHGS may, at its discretion, exhibit or reformat / reproduce (for preservation and/or publication) all or part of a collection in the media of our choice. Per IRS regulations, monetary appraisals cannot be undertaken by any representative of NEHGS. All monetary appraisals will be done at the donor's expense. Donors of manuscript are asked to provide information about the collection's creator(s) or compiler(s) to assist us with cataloging. Permanent deposits are discouraged because NEHGS must expend its limited resources towards maintaining and preserving fully donated manuscripts. In rare instances when such collections are accepted, they must be central to the acquisition policy and should have a defined limit at which time they become the property of NEHGS. For more information on donating manuscript items, please contact: Judy Lucey Archivist New England Historic Genealogical Society 99-101 Newbury Street Boston, MA 02116-3007 jlucey@nehgs.org 617-226-1223 -----Original Message----- From: tmg-bounces@rootsweb.com [mailto:tmg-bounces@rootsweb.com] On Behalf Of Donald W. Range via Sent: July-30-15 4:09 PM To: 'pbalkcom'; tmg@rootsweb.com Subject: Re: [TMG] Preserving those huge databases I recently needed to look up for a friend the FamilySearch guidelines for donated genealogical materials they do and don't want. Since it may be of interest to those following Pat's query, I'll post the link here: https://familysearch.org/sites/default/uploads/Donations-Guidelines-REVISION -12-July-2012.pdf -----Original Message----- From: tmg-bounces@rootsweb.com [mailto:tmg-bounces@rootsweb.com] On Behalf Of pbalkcom via Sent: Thursday, July 30, 2015 3:26 AM To: TMG@rootsweb.com Subject: [TMG] Preserving those huge databases In several recent posts, people, like Lee, have stated that they have upwards of 50,000 people in their database. It brings to mind the question - What will happen to all that work after I die? or better yet - What can I do now to preserve that information? Because our databases are not static and change on an almost daily basis, it's not practical to start printing out 50,000 Individual Reports that you could give to an archive or library because what you print today would possibly be changed by tomorrow. One could write a book that might include a few thousand of those people in it but what happens to all the information you have gathered on all those other thousands of collateral people? I'd be interested in hearing of people's plans for their TMG databases and also their Second Site websites after they are gone. Thanks. The TMG archive is found here: http://archiver.rootsweb.ancestry.com/th/index/TMG/ Instructions on how to subscribe to TMG: http://lists.rootsweb.ancestry.com/index/other/Software/TMG.html ------------------------------- To unsubscribe from the list, please send an email to TMG-request@rootsweb.com with the word 'unsubscribe' without the quotes in the subject and the body of the message