My Genealogy on the WWW

Mike Sheldon AAA

www.drmikesheldon.com

www.sheldongenealogy.com

AAA Like most of us I have spent many hours

visiting libraries and record centres to examine original documents.

There is an issue about the accuracy of on-line information – and how can you check it?

But the future has to be on the www as it is not practical for most people to go back to the original resources – but someone needs to, and make an accurate record of what is there – at a fair price!

These 3 attributes are the most important reason for building a personal web presence.

So where should my information go?

SoG library – preferably as a DVD

Put all my papers in a box and in my will pass them on to someone else

Most of us now use computers to record and keep data

Put up my tree on commercial web sites

Have my own web site – or even in cooperation with other researchers

The SoG welcomes our research

The Internet Generation

We are the past ! Paper will soon cease to be available. The SoG library will soon be all electronic

How accurate are resources on the web? A story about indexes.

Ancestry.co.uk

Help from the 1841 census ?

Name Index at Ancestry.co.uk is flawed Looking at the actual pages, what I saw

as Sheldon in the images, appear in the index as –

Skelton Skeltona Shelden Skeldon

Shddn Shelan Shelley

Alphen Canstand

Ancestry.co.uk

Although the indexers may have got it wrong, at least the original image of the census was also there.

This is a good lesson for always having both – an image of the original and an index of the contents.

So one of my valued items on my web site is the Bigland pedigree.

The value of seeing the original sources Bigland Pedigree story

Book about the Sheldon’s by Barnard. Now out of print but I photocopied most of it.

In it he mentions a full pedigree of the Sheldon’s held by Mrs Warriner of Weston Park.

I visited Warwick library and there I saw an entry for the Bigland Pedigree

Bigland Pedigree – my on-line copy

AVALIABLE

Valuable Resources placed on line

Anyone in the world can see them. You can update and correct information at any

time Web sites can be archived and so saved for

the future. Other people can contact you with information

they have recorded. An international community of Sheldon

researchers can be linked together.

The Fosbrook Family

More resources I want to record

There is an out of print book about the famous Sheldons by EAB Barnard.

I have a photocopy of it so does Ancestry.co.uk – but they charge you to look at any pages.

I want to put it up for free

The Dilemma

Is it better to give your information to a commercial web site and then pay to have access to it.

Or create your own web site (and pay for it) and keep it up to date?

Either may be appropriate – I chose to go my own way.

How to make a web site

As it was a few years ago I started I had to study quite a bit about computers first.

Today it is a lot easier.

OU course on web design, and then learned how to use Dreamweaver.

Dreamweaver

mgsheldon.org

Using Search Engines

DONT put – Mike Sheldon – in the box – well down the page as there are so many Mike Sheldons in the world.

DO put – “Dr Mike Sheldon” – comes up at the top after the adverts

Any Questions ?