WikiTree For Societies, Libraries and Other Organizations

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Surnames/tags: societies libraries

Why WikiTree?

It is not uncommon for historical societies and libraries to be short of the funds needed to build an expansive internet catalog of what they have to offer in their collections. With WikiTree's focus on history, not just family history, and because WikiTree is free, it makes a wonderful tool for societies and libraries.

Though WikiTree's obvious focus is on person history, building a shared family tree of everyone who has ever lived (and a few people who never did!), we also have free-space pages, which are perfect for focusing on the places and events of history.

Anything can go on a free-space page. If your organization doesn't have a website, one of our Free-Space pages can be that landing page. You can place announcements or talk to each other using the pages, foster discussion using the G2G forum, and get aid from the community when they land on your page.

If you already have a main page for your organization, WikiTree is easy to link to. It can be the working zone for your members. Membership at WikiTree is free, so anyone can join. Once you have an account and sign our Honor Code, you can edit anywhere on the site. This works out very well when many people are working on the same project. One important note, you must be "yourself", as in please sign up under your own name. You can use your society's name on any free-space pages you create.

One example of collaboration opportunities is if your collection includes a local family history. If there is a family tree included, you can work on transcribing the tree onto to WikiTree, and link back to your work on your own site. Many volunteers can work at the same time, taking several pages and adding them. Soon you have a digital version of that history, helping to keep your physical papers safe, but also very available to the community and beyond. WikiTree is a worldwide community.

In addition to adding trees, we have photo space, so you can add scans and photographs of the actual pages of the family history to the people they refer to, or of any of the photos included of those people. You can take photos of items donated to your group and include them on profiles of the people they belonged to or on a free-space page showcasing your collection. In fact, we love when images accompany research. It brings history that much more "to life".

Multiple free-space pages can be created for any group, so you can keep your focus narrow and specialize what you're talking about on each page. One page might be on town disasters, another on photos donated that are not identified, another with minutes from your latest group meeting, and yet another for a specific event like town reunions, parades, celebrations, and anniversaries, and yet more for the local cemeteries. The options are never-ending, and can be completely tailored to what your group needs. All it takes is you and your members joining and starting the work. Being a wiki, it means you can tinker a bit with what you want and change it if you find you need to break an idea into smaller pieces.

Here are examples of how Free-Space pages are being used by local groups:

• Ephemera collections like Ethel's Postcard Collection
• Historic sites like the EV McWilliams Farm
• Town celebrations like the Pleasantville 1949 Town Centennial
• Town disasters like Pleasantville Catastrophes
• Local Newspaper clippings (especially important for rare papers) Special Edition of the Pleasantville News
• Town histories Pleasantville, Iowa History
• Unidentified photos collections Space:Webb Shadle Library Unknown Photos

Another handy feature are our categories. All the work you do on your town (or state, or group) can be kept together using categories, both those for keeping track of projects in process and just in having certain traits in common. A great bonus to using categories is that all WikiTree members use them, so you may run into non-organizational members of WikiTree aiding your group because they've been working on research in the same area. The category for Pleasantville, Iowa, for example has been added to extensively by the town's local librarians, but also by other WikiTreers who just happened to also have family connections to that area.

Once you start adding the notable families of your area to WikiTree, you also have the option of starting to easily analyze who was connected to whom and where/why. You can also see connections to other like national heroes and villains, which can make for fun newsletters additions and events ideas. Our Connection and Relationship finders are wonderful tools for figuring out those connections.

If you are currently using WikiTree for your society, and have ideas to add here, or if you have a question, please use the comments section! We'd love to hear from you.