by Bob Maynard
Genealogist
Now that you have all these records, where do you store them? You need to store them in a cool, dry place, not in a garage or outbuilding or loft as these areas may have an atmosphere that is probably damper than your home and may be home to mice or other vermin that like to have a meal of paper.
After collecting all of the family history and your house is packed with stuff in binders and notebooks, getting a memory stick is a great way to save the history and with that you can share with friends or others researching your family tree and letters.
Another option would be to see if another relative would like it or maybe the local archives office would take it as an outright gift or loan. As a loan, you would be able to get it back at some point. Making a copy of the family history so you can give up the originals and know you still have a record that you can carry on and go back to the transcript as you continue on your quest for more family history.
If you decide to deposit them in a local archive office and you do not want pirating of your records, you can put a copyright notice at the front of the transcript showing the copyright symbol with your name and year followed by notice that the transcript is yours and cannot be used for commercial publication without your permission. There could be a charge for this.
Bob Maynard is a local historian and genealogist, and will be writing a monthly column about the topic in The Leduc/Wetaskiwin Pipestone Flyer.