Tracing Family Steps

**This is a Story Map example project for History 249: Genealogy and History Workshop. For additional information,  see the library guide for the course .**

It depends on how you would like to approach it! Here are some suggestions:

• Select a relative and create a Story Map based on their life
• Map your ancestors over time and where they lived
• Is there a particular event or landmark that influenced your family history? This can be included as well!

There can be multiple challenges with creating a genealogy Story Map - the main reason being that you might encounter incomplete records or records that contain places that no longer exist.

Give your best estimate! It is not necessarily important to be 100% accurate, only give a representation of the place or add a visual marker.

Examples of what we can do:

• No city name included? Place a marker in the middle of the state or country
• Counties, prefectures, districts, or other general regions can also be used
• Does the region no longer exist? Use your best guess! For example - in my map, Prussia no longer exists as a region, so I used a few present-day cities to try and make a guess

Use the map tour to track the movement of a person, event, or thought. Images and videos can be added to the pop-ups and a location is tied to each slide. Tips for Map Tours:

• Use whatever basemap (background) looks the best to you!
• If your points are getting lost in the background, change the point
• Think about the order of the points! Does it tell a story of where someone traveled?
• Only point features are available for the Map Tour (ex. we can't do shapes or draw lines)

  Want to add a quick map?   The Express Maps are an easy way to add a map without having to do too much setup. They can also serve as a another interactive image for the project.

When working with a text block, Express Maps are a good tool for creating a simple snapshot map. Multiple symbols can be added, but these maps are more impactful and easy to read if they have minimal features.

A spreadsheet list is your best method of keeping track of what you want to map. You do not need to use the exact format! Use whatever makes it easiest for you to track locations. Feel free to copy the template directly to your own Google Drive.

**Since this template contains information on my family history - it will be open temporarily and occasionally you may need to request access to see it. If you are requesting access, in the notification just let me know that it's for the class!**

If you need additional detail on the map that the Story Map is not giving you - there are ways to create your own map and add it to the Map Tour.

Create a genealogy snapshot map - this can be used as the background of the Story Map. These locations were created from the example spreadsheet template linked in this example.

In order to do this - you must create a spreadsheet list of all your locations with latitude and longitude coordinates. Other information can be adjusted, but the map will require the lat/long in order to find the spot on the map.

Do a Google search! Typically, Google will tell you the best coordinates to use - or you can click on a spot in Google Maps to find the lat/long.

• North or East - all positive numbers
• West or South - all negative numbers
• Only include numbers in the spreadsheet! Do not include letters or degree markings

Currently, there aren't requirements for how citations should be done in StoryMaps - but here are some tips for how to embed your sources into media. Ask yourself these questions:

• What is the license or copyright for the material?
• Does the poster/author have any requirements on how they want their images or media to be shared?
• Embedding is usually safe - but if there are any copyright strikes against the video poster, this may deactivate the link in your project.