[Genealib] GEDCOM in the Library

[Kathy Rippel]

You can download Personal Ancestral File for free from 
www.familysearch.org (LDS). It isn't the fanciest program available, 
but has many nice features with a variety of possibilities for 
charts, etc. There may be a way to point all saving to be done to 
your flash drive port, but that's for the techies, I haven't tried it.

I used PAF since my twenties. The price was right and I found it easy 
to use. I don't see any reason for libraries to provide expensive 
software. For patrons really interested in loading their family trees 
on the web, there are now several online programs that either already 
allow imports, or are developing it.

GEDCOM has changed over the years; the PAF version I have on my work 
computer is 5.5. I'm not sure how backward compatible it is. I would 
see if the one you have will load and then resave in a newer format.

Kathy

At 09:53 AM 6/10/2008, Jane wrote:

>We recently received a manuscript collection (handed over across the 
>reference desk) including a cd with a GEDCOM file. Does anyone have 
>similar disks and how do you handle reading and maintaining 
>them?  As it stands, we do not have any genealogy programs on the 
>Library computers.  If we add a program somewhere and transfer the 
>file, which would be best (easiest to use and update as time goes by)?
>On a related note -- has the GEDCOM file type changed over the 
>years?  Or are we ok keeping the data as a gedcom??
>
>Thanks for any ideas.
>
>Jane Pearson
>
>
>
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Kathy Rippel
Dept. Head/Consultant--Resource Sharing and Access ;
Pathfinder Central (Manager)
Central Kansas Library System
1409 Williams
Great Bend, KS 67530

(620-792-4865) phone
(800-362-2642) toll-free, KS
(620-792-5495) fax

kdr at ckls.org
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