Manifesto for the Digital Family Archive

As a new dad I am constantly thinking about ways to capture and document my life and that of my infant daughter, Hudson as she grows up. But as a producer/videographer and instructional technologist I think my responsibility to her goes deeper. I want to help her understand both her Afro American and Puerto Rican heritage and capture her rich family history in new and compelling ways.

I mean, come on--every family has albums of pictures and old videos gathering dust in someone's closet or attic. Well, that's exactly how this issue hit me. I found a bag of black and white photos from the 1940's in a Ziploc bag decaying in my granddad's basement. He actually used a stick pin to hold together a incredible black and white photo that had torn in half. It was of one of my favorite uncles, who had long since passed away. It blew my mind that he could do this to such a beautiful picture! I promptly took all 150 or so of them, (he did not give them up easily, but I smuggled them out of the house) and scanned them all and secretly returned them to him. I then had a friend restore them for me and I posted them on the web so the family can identify the subjects. It is a hard battle, and I have not identified them all but I'm determined to do so before the relatives that can do so, pass on.

So, how can we make these historical, "primary source", documents more meaningful and valuable to your family? By sharing them in interesting and compelling ways. Family memories are meant to be shared, so I attempt to develop ways to capture these moments, optimally, so that our children can use them as the learning tools they are. My educational documentary, TechnoMecca, is one method I am using to capture info on how I grew up for my daughter (and other kids) to learn about the time period in which I grow up. Ultimately, I hope to explore a variety of methods to do this on this blog.

The web provides an ideal platform for archiving family histories. Just think, if your grandparents were able to capture their "primary source" perspectives on important moments in history and utilize an evolving, ever improving set of tools to share them with you when you are old enough to appreciate them. Wouldn't that be a more compelling lens through which to view history when you are old enough to appreciate it, in Middle and High School? Well, think about it. Soldiers in the Iraq "war" will be able to share their perspectives on the war with their grand kids in High Definition video (and surround sound) if they understand how to do so. Just think, revisionist history can be done away with in our lifetime...ok, ok-- I'm getting to political, but you understand what I mean.

Family is at the core of community, so in order to build strong communities we also need to look for new ways to develop strong family bonds by using modern web-based tools. I propose urban families should begin creating family communication hubs and archives in cyberspace by communicating via 21 Century tools like social networks, wikis and blogs. The idea is, if we use tools that the younger family members already embrace, we ensure their ongoing development as interactive family archives. A families' youth can be used to teach these skills to older members of the family who may be less "network literate". They may also be a bit more patient with grandma than us older folk.


Communication between family members is vital, so to aid in the process of educating adult family members to be "social network literate" and computer literate, in general, we need to embrace modern methods of documenting family histories. Semi-private, password protected social networks are great ways to do this. Sites like Gubble.com allow you to create these types of semi-private family networks. Network literacy, used in this context, is the process of understanding social networks and how they are used to enhance ones communication with others, namely, family members.

One of the biggest reasons to do this is that you as a parent need to use and understand social networking in order to protect your children from new issues and dangers that arise due to the popularity of tools like this. Virtual communities and social networks are places for cyberpredators and cyber bullys of all kinds to lurk, and understanding these communities is vitally important for responsible, 21st Century parents. All networks have privacy settings that allow users to control how much, or how little of your personal information the public web sees. It is vital for you to read and spend time understanding these settings so that you can educate your children on how to correctly set them up (I'll discuss this more in later posts).

What is "Digital Family Archiving"?
An important aspect of the 21st Century family life should be capturing your family history to share with your children. We all do it, we just don't know what to do with it once we have it. Not just the family movies but first hand accounts of family milestones and historical events as told by family members who witnessed them. This is vital family data that should be protected and cherished but most importantly it should be made accessible for family members to explore and take pride in which means it should be tagged for easy search and retrieval.


For this reason it is important for the modern family to buy and lay claim to their family domain name. I purchased http://Grandison.info for this reason this site currently serves as my portfolio site, but I have a "History" page that I am developing. I also have a private family group on my Ning network- http://urbanthinking.net I use it to share pictures and videos with family members.


There are hundreds of extensions to choose from but it is important to own the .com extension if at all possible. I suggest families utilize the .info and .name, because this is the reason these domains were created and they are in less demand so they will be less expensive. Sites like Godaddy.com sell these domains very inexpensively (from $1.99/year and up) I encourage all families to become a part of this movement by creating a family blog or website. An added bonus is you can create a "vanity" email address [your first name]@[your last name].com for every member of your family. Emails addresses like this show everyone your are a member of a tech saavy family and they are super easy to remember.


If you have an existing site or choose to keep it simple and using a template-based site building tool like Ning or Typepad (Typepad is the blog tool this blog is built on) that creates domains automatically. You can still use a family domain name by forwarding it to your blog, website or network (Ning, Gubble) that you are a part of.


If all this seems to complex, at a minimum I suggest you create a private group on social networking site like Facebook or find a Ning network that you like and create a private group for your family. Remember the key to this activity is using service providers (ISP's) or networks that are strong stable companies that will be around in the long run. You don't want to build your family website or group on a platform that goes the way of the Betamax tape.


What else does creating a family webspace entail for the 21st century digital family?

* It means moving the family tree info (birth dates, family addresses, new children's names, ect.) from your great grandmothers family bible to a shared (ideally password protected) webspace online to be shared and built upon by family members.
* It means scanning and digitizing all of your historic family images starting with the oldest first. Photos that are on the original photo paper are decaying and fading away in your family albums right now. Scan each page of images as soon as you can or to quote my favorite film quote they will be "...lost like tears in the rain." (Gibson-Bladerunner).
* It means creating a digital portfolio for your child to track and make their educational development visible and an important part of to your families web-based community.
* It means at least one family member should have their genealogy traced using new inexpensive ($399) DNA sequencing techniques offered on sites like 23 and Me . General info on the families' geospecific origins and racial info should be shared via your families' web-based community with family members who may not have the financial means to have this testing done. Think of how far disseminating this type of info to families around the country would go in erasing racial barriers.
* It means capturing historical milestones and special family moments in short 3-5 min video clips and posting them on your families' historic site. These clips should be properly tagged and named so that historical moments can be found easily by future generations.
* It means interviewing the oldest members of your family on video or audio to create a oral history narrative on the site. I suggest video but developing listening skills in kids is vital, so either method is effective.


I will add to these activities and discuss other interesting and compelling ways present your web-based multimedia family histories in future posts. I would love to hear your ideas on this subject as well. Feel free to post them in the "Comments" section of this post.