Public Vs Private

     The other day I was checking my Ancestry.com hints, viewing only photos.  I was both surprised and not surprised to see almost a dozen photos suggested as hints for one of my GG-Grandfather,.  I was surprised because they were photos from my own collection, yet not surprised because this happens often.  It is frustrating because these photos are attached to my family tree and, instead of using the ancestry feature that allows users to attach photos in a way that is really a link to the original, this person downloaded the photos and re-uploaded them to their tree.

     As I said, this happens fairly often.  In some cases, it's a situation like this one, where it seems that they got the photos directly from
Ancestry.  Other times they got them from another site that I'd shared them to.  And the issue is not that they uploaded the photos, the real issue is that they aren't giving credit.

     In the case of the photos found on Ancestry, the other user has, purposefully or not, subverted a system designed to maintain provenance.   In the case of photos from other sites, the user has declined to cite the source.  Either way, it's the wrong thing to do.

     I vented a bit on Facebook and the comments indicated that many others have become fed-up with this sort of thing and now keep only private family trees.  I fully understand that they have their reasons for keeping private trees and respect their right to have them.

     At the same time, I can't stand private trees.  I view genealogy as a collaborative effort.  I make some discoveries, which connect me to another researcher.  Their family tree gives me information that allows me to make more discoveries.  All of this information is then available for others to build off of.  More and more people add to the data and, if everyone is making their discoveries available online, we all benefit.  This is how I view online family trees.  Why would I make mine private?

     There are a number of ways to share family trees online, from private trees and public trees on many websites, to truly collaborate trees at sites like WikiTree.com.  I would never want someone to do something that they are not comfortable with, but would encourage people to be open to sharing and working with other genealogists.  If we work together we can accomplish more than we can on our own.

Sharing Family Photos

I like to post all of my family photos to my Flickr account. My hope is that relatives will see the photos and leave a note with information or identify individuals. This has happened, but not often.

But I've noticed something lately: folks are finding the photos and taking them to add to their own online family trees. I've found my photos (and yes, they are my edited scans) being used online on trees, like those hosted at Ancestry.com. And let me say: this is fine - it's why I put them out there. I want to share my photos with other family members.

But, I'm missing out on another goal: connecting, communicating and sharing information. For example, I recently checkout out my "shaky leaves" for my Craft family line at ancestry.com and found a few exact matching trees. From there, I once again saw some of my scanned photos (shown). I only knew the identity of three of the folks in this photo, but the person who'd added it to their tree had identified everyone!

I was very excited to be able to identify these relatives, but at the same time it's a little frustrating. I'm sharing my information and would hope that other researchers would reciprocate by sharing their information - not just take mine and run.

Also, there is no information on where the photo came from, or "credit" given. Personally, for my research, I want to be able to talk to the person who owns the original before I take the photo for fact.

I hope that in the future, researchers will consider an information exchange in such situations, and not just take and run.

Finding Photos on Flickr

I love flickr.com for photo sharing and storage.  It's a great place to find photos from others, including family history and genealogy photos.

Flickr has a section, called The Commons, where museums and archive can post their photos to share.  Institutions such as The Library of Congress, The State Library of South Wales, The National Galleries of Scotland, Imperial War Museum, The National Medium Museum, George Eastman House, and Nationaal Archief have posted part of their collections online.  In general, most of these photos have no copyright, due to expiration. 

These groups are great places to find photos because, just like the rest of the photos on flickr, you can search the tags, titles or descriptions to find photos.  When you find a photo, if you have a flickr/yahoo account you can comment on the photo - many people comment with wikipedia links to describe the person, place or thing in the photo.

But searchers shouldn't limit themselves to the commons when searching for family and genealogy photos.  Small museums and archive might not be connected with The Commons, but may still have a flickr account.  I found out that a local archive, the Kenan Research Center, has a flickr account.  Searching for "snow" and "atlanta" turned up a variety of photos that they have posted online.  I'm always looking for photos of atlanta to try and find photos of where my ancestors lived.  I was very happy to find these.

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PS: If you have an unusual or not-so-popular surname make sure to search for it.  I just found senior portraits of my aunt and uncle from a fellow classmate who's scanned his yearbook into flickr!