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Genealogy is dominated by one approach to writing family history.
It is led by people who are scholarly scribes. They are committed to genealogy writing in an PhD academic style. These scholarly scribes write for journals and teach others to be scholarly scribes just like them.
To become a genealogy writer, they believe you must spend a hundred hours in week-long institutes and self-study practice to learn to craft genealogy-specific citations. You also must write in a dry, factual style, avoid using images, and put a footnote after every few sentences.
If you are fortunate to get your writing is published, it must always be published behind a paywall, so only other scholarly scribes can read it. Once you have accomplished this, then you can call yourself a real genealogist. (Everyone else they call a hobbyist.)
I believe the scholarly scribe approach to writing is dragging genealogy back to its elitist roots.
Genealogy writing in the 21st century will be led by the Chronicle Makers. These are people who do most of their genealogy work online. Their family trees and genealogy research are public, and they hope to connect with distant cousins to swap stories and photographs.
For Chronicle Makers, genealogy is an adventure of discovery, and they often share their findings with family and friends. They publish short, engaging pieces to social media ,and their family trees are filled with attractive images. Their focus in on who their ancestors were as people, not their lineage or ties to the historically famous. Chronicle Makers also know their own history is as important to preserve as those of their ancestors, and so they include some of themself in each piece they publish.
Because of the Chronicle Makers, I believe the 21st century is the Golden Age of Genealogy, and now is the best time to write and publish your family history.
Hurrah to the Chronicle Makers!
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Host: Denyse Allen
Music: “Royal Banana" Kevin MacLeod (incompetech.com)Licensed under Creative Commons: By Attribution 4.0 Licensehttp://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/
It's Time for The Chronicle Makers