Eight weeks into the New Year, I decided to make a plea in this Genealogy News Sheet:
Use this Leap Year Genealogy Day–an extra day given to us in 2016–to ensure your genealogy manuscripts and photographs will be preserved and made accessible in your absence.
If something should happen to you this year–choose in advance where your stuff will be deposited. If your children do not have the room or the interest in keeping your genealogy what will they do with your stuff?
Genealogy libraries and public library local history rooms often accept personal collections that apply to their areas of interest. And remember the Genealogy Library Center, Inc. which my husband Alma Eakle and I set up so personal genealogy collections that might other wise be destroyed could have a home. (See Home Page, http://arleneeakle.com for the collections currently deposited with us.)
Please don’t wait until you have time to organize your manuscripts or to convert all the data you have collected to digital format. Make plans now. Then you can work to get your stuff ready to deposit. Your children will thank you and the genealogy world will bless your name in future years as they use what you collected and shared. Your favorite genealogist, Arlene Eakle
PS I receive donations to this library every week from somewhere in the United States–small collections, large collections. And there is a dear woman who watches for diaries and family letters and Bibles donated to the Good Will organizations in my area. Then, she leaves what she finds at my back door on a regular basis. Imagine–giving your genealogy to the Good Will? Give it a permanent home instead.