Sharing your family tree

Give and you will recieve

Sharing what information you have with other family members is not only satisfying but it often results in them sharing further information with yourself.

The more that you share information, the more you will find other family members sharing things with you. Most family members will happily share their information, photos, certificates, newspaper articles and other information. However if you publish this information in anyway, then you should acknowledge the sources of your information or it is likely that they will not share anything new that they discover. Creative Commons is a good way to acknowledge your sources and material while still sharing it, to learn more go to Creative Commons.

Copyright

When you are researching and presenting family tree information there can be a question about who owns the information. The obvious statement is that if they are my ancestors whether it is my parents or Great x 5 grandparents then ownership is shared by all their descendants.

There can be no denying the shared aspect of common ancestors, but if someone writes up a family history book with stories and their understanding of events then they can claim copyright on that material.

Dates and information that are in the public domain cannot be copyrighted, however the documents that you access to discover much of this information can be copyrighted to the government agency, newspaper, etc where the information was published.

Photographs can be owned by the person who took the photo.

Personal Information

If you publish family trees on the internet then you need to be aware of privacy. The living people listed in your tree may not even be people that you have met and while they are living it is their right to not have any of their personal information displayed in any way. Some people are concerned about privacy, others are concerned about identity theft and in some countries it is against the law to publish information on living people within a family tree.

Publishing family trees on the internet makes it easier to connect with distant family members researching the same ancestors. So to address privacy concerns some genealogy websites will strip out all living people from your tree and others will make all living people private so that only the people who you share passwords with can access the information on the living, leaving only information on the deceased which can be publicly viewed.

Personal information for the living should be managed appropriately, photos and documents that are displayed publicly should ideally be only for deceased people.