Welcome to FamilyBook - the place to share family history with relatives and friends

Family historians and those investigating histories of properties frequently struggle to find a means to collate their knowledge and make it available to friends and relatives. Their web based sources and private, real-world, discoveries and artefacts require a platform that they can use to showcase their researches and the stories they have uncovered.

FamilyBook is a free-to-use project to share your work. It is an archive and repository of any type of information relating to your family, place or event. It is private but can be shared with anyone you nominate. It is therefore ideal for sharing recent as well as historic photographs, documents, videos and sound recordings not to mention the stories that link them all.

FamilyBook readers can be Visitors, Members, Editors or Administrators. Each role has its capabilities and responsibilities. It is ideal for collaborative working as there is no limit to the numbers of each role.

When someone logs onto the FamilyBook website they can see just one FamilyBook and have the role that has been allocated to them.

Each FamilyBook is structured just like any other reference book. It has its Contents list; Introduction; Chapters covering differing aspects of the story; Appendices of supporting material; and, an Index. Each page will have its Footnotes describing the page’s sources and their accuracy.

There are four Appendices: a Directory with a page for each person; a Gazetteer of key places; a Gallery of pictures; and, a Library of copies of documents, files and web links. All are interlinked and are fully searchable.

Unlike a conventional reference book FamilyBook is animated and interactive. Relationship-to-me diagrams, timelines, family trees, migration maps and many other ways of viewing the information are available. Hovering over or touching a link gives a pre-view of the information provided if the link were followed. A person featured in a picture is a link to that person. Hovering over that person shows who the person is, some background on the person, and, if clicked opens the detailed page for the person. Links enable browsing from one point of interest to the next and it's easy to return to any previously viewed pages.

Touch or hover your mouse pointer over the diagram opposite to see how FamilyBook can help your family understand their history.

If you have been invited to register to view an existing FamilyBook or your would like to create your own book click the Reister link on the top right hand corner of the screen.