How to organize/share genealogy research and family photos?

[Acadie]

I've made some exciting genealogy discoveries during the pandemic, but apparently I'm much better at digging through archives than organizing the results, which are currently sticking at all angles and in no particular order out of a binder 🙂  

I need to join an online genealogy service, right? Is Ancestry the best? The ability to link so many different kinds of records seems thrilling, especially with this ridiculous binder in my hands. I do wonder about privacy settings and concerns, especially since people keep encouraging me to get my parents to do genetic testing to get past a few dead ends.

I'd also like to share the family tree, photos and narratives I'm writing with extended family. I'm a little torn between printing something to gift relatives and setting something up online where I could keep adding information and images. I had the benefit of starting with genealogy research one of my grandfathers and another relative did, and It was an absolute treasure to have these records with their handwritten notes. I'd love for some great-great-niece someday to be able to use what I've discovered, so I'm a little afraid of creating a purely digital record that could disappear (which is not entirely rational, I realize, since paper can also disappear).

What do you do to organize, share, and perhaps even pass along to posterity your findings?

[Beth S]

I'm eager to hear from others.

Mine is a work-in-progress.  What started out as 4 typed pages for a homeschool unit on Family Tree is now 18 pages!
The final page is a list of all the resources I used to assemble the info.
(My uncle did a high school project, and traced our ancestors to Baby Peregrine White on the Mayflower. I have that project now!)

Mine is oriented on my children's relationships:
   "Your Father's Maternal Side of the Family" (for example, then I list his mom's parents, grandparents, etc.
    I put personal anecdotes in italics (for example):  She made our blue and white quilt.

I use Google Photo Albums to share scanned old photos (found when cleaning out my folks' house) with the extended family.
You can add comments to each photo, identifying them.
So recently I scanned each page of that 18 page document & added it, just so it's accessible to everyone.

It would be a fun/easy Christmas project to slightly edit the document for each of my siblings and cousins, for example, and print out the info and put into a simple portfolio folder.

(The key for me has been realizing this is a lifelong project---even adding in my nephew's new fiance last month!)

I'm looking forward to others' ideas. 

 

[Hannah]

I use Ancestry and it works well for me.  I go through phases of paying for the subscription and then letting it go again if I'm not actively searching. One is always able to view one's tree and anything that you uploaded yourself even when not paying the subscription at the time.  You can set your tree to private and only invite the people you'd like to share it with, or have a public tree.