Finding Families

Library Journal did a special report on genealogy products last week profiling nine online resources to help you track down your nearest and dearest through the ages. This, and a delightful framed collage of sepia tinted photos hanging in pride of place in a friend's house, got me thinking about how different the experience of future generations will be to ours. Instead of searching hard and long to find connections to our ancestors, future generations will be hard pressed to extricate themselves from the weight of ancestral evidence.

What will be left for our descendants to find when their distant ancestors have already been neatly cataloged and it's impossible to escape the presence of the immediate past due to the proliferation of photos, videos and journals, no longer contained in a dusty shoebox but spilling out to fill entire cupboards or, more often than not, broadcast far and wide on the internet?

Davina Morgan-Witts, BookBrowse editor.