Hello All, I am and I am not a beginner. I have a fair amount of paper based research done in the 1970s and 1980s which I am resurrecting and dragging into the 21st Century.
I do not really understand what you mean by “dragging into the 21st century”, your paper research from the 1970s & 1980s if carefully done is as valid today as it was then. Furthermore it will last thousands of years longer than the majority of digital records created today.
Experienced “digital” family historians recommend a paper back up of digital work as an archive of last resort.
What is the best way to do this. My families are mainly Scottish, but with links to Burma, Jamaica, USA and Australia in the days of the British Empire, with branches still in these countries. Would this impact on my choice of which website to use - Ancestry or another ?
To a degree yes, most Scottish records are held on the Scottish Government website, but apart from that instance the big online providers hold various amounts of records from different countries with Findmypast & Ancestry leading the way.
However before subscribing to any subscription website I would suggest exhausting the holdings of the many free record providers such as familysearch. After exhausting the holdings for those websites or while using them keep a look-out for “free weekends” or “free trail” options for the subscription websites, these happen quite frequently and may allow you to exhaust their holdings without subscribing.
For recording my own tree would I be better to use a stand alone? Two people have mentioned Family Tree Maker - is this current, or was it popular a while ago and people still use it ?
Really appreciate some help here !
Without doubt the best way to record your family tree is on your own computer at home. There are numerous reasons for this but the main ones are control and safety.
A number of websites “allow” third parties to change or add records to trees hosted on their websites, this allows years of painstaking accurate work to be trashed in seconds, never host your tree on a site which allows others to amend the tree.
I would suggest if you want an internet tree host it on your own website or a site like tribal roots and never on a site like Ancestry.
Cheers
Guy