Want To Preserve All Your Genealogy Blog Efforts? Better book it! (February 20, 2015)

Like many genealogy/family history bloggers, soon after I began my blog and accumulated an increasing number of posts to which I had devoted a lot of time and energy -- as well as photographic and documentary materials -- I started to become concerned about how this continuing effort was going to be preserved for my sons, future descendants, interested family members, and relatives. I realized that the words, photos, and documents in my posts existed only as electrons in the "cloud" that is Google Blogger.  While I was (and am) happy with the quality, speed, and ease of publishing posts via Blogger to share with family and others, I became increasingly aware that I had no permanent, secure control over the content I had painstakingly created. As I thought about it, the preservation of the electrons that are Filiopietism Prism blog is anything but assured (think hackers, destruction of a server farm, future demise of Blogger, etc.).

Prior to beginning my blog, I had some experience using iPhoto to make Apple books. In fact, I have created five such hardback photo books to date. All are genealogy related, but they have limited text options and so are largely captioned photographs of family history and family events such as our son's wedding and the birth of our granddaughter. It was apparent that iPhoto books were not going to be a means of preserving my blog in book form. 

I started looking around for other options.

In early April 2013, I contacted Heather Rojo of Nutfield Genealogy blog to inquire about any efforts she made at preserving her blog in book form . . . and that is when I learned about Blurb and "slurping" blog content into a book format. Heather told me that she had been using a website called Blurb to publish Nutfield Genealogy in book form. Blurb does various kinds of books, but Heather's favorite feature on Blurb -- and the reason she uses it for making Nutfield Genealogy into book form -- is Blurb's "Blog to Book" feature.  

"You have to download a software called Booksmart to use Blurb," explained Heather. "When you choose the blog to book option it slurps the posts you select (you can select all or just certain ones) right into a book project.  You can edit it or leave it as it is.  It's very easy."

Following Heather's recommendation, I went to Blurb and produced a book of the first three months of Filiopietism Prism in plenty of time to make a Christmas gift of a copy to each of our sons. The finished product is pictured above. It is 96-pages of quality, high-gloss paper with a hardback cover and paper dust jacket. The book is square and large, measuring 12 inches x 12 inches. The inside looks like this . . . 

What is immediately apparent is that the book format is not identical to the online version of the blog.  To see the difference, compare the actual blog post of Monday, February 11, 2013 here with the photo above showing how the same post loaded into Blurb and became the book entry shown above after some editing by me. Comments, color, and other template features of the blog page are eliminated and only the essential content is included.

I found that once the blog content is slurped into the chosen Blog to Book format, there is still considerable editing and formatting to be done in order to avoid wasted space, move photos into more logical positions, and to create a more book-like appearance. It is time consuming, but well worth the effort.

I have been working on Vol. 2 of my blog preservation project and have been contemplating some changes. In the beginning I thought I had to faithfully duplicate and preserve all the content of my blog . . .  but with more thought, I have determined that some of the post features on the blog are themselves somewhat too topical and ephemeral -- and thus probably not as important to try to preserve.  Case in point is my weekly Saturday Serendipity post that makes reading recommendations about interesting posts on other blogs and about genealogy/history-related pieces I have come across. Similarly, my old Samaritan Sunday series about genealogy-related good deeds performed by kind and generous strangers is likely on the chopping block for future volumes.   

What about cost?? 

The price per book can vary depending on the quality of the paper chosen and whether or not you want a softcover or hardcover (with dust jacket or ImageWrap), but for my 96-page book the cost ran about $1.00/page. When I consider the time and effort I have put into blogging and the value to my family of making sure it survives as something other than electrons, I think $1.00/page is a great bargain!

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All photographs by the author. 

Read more about Heather Rojo's book projects and her use of Blurb here.

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Copyright 2015, John D. Tew

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