I have been reading Dick Eastman’s Newsletter for as long as I’ve been researching my family.
This is the best time in history to be conducting genealogical research. Genealogy has accelerated at breakneck speed since we began using computers in the 1980s or before. The introduction of the Personal Ancestral File (PAF) genealogy database software and all the subsequent programs for the PC and Macintosh has provided us with computerization of our research. It’s simply a matter of acquiring a piece of evidence and then entering the data and source citation.
The Internet brought the establishment of websites, such as RootsWeb.com, Ancestry.com, and FamilySearch.com, that allowed the upload of GEDCOM files. This allowed us to share information with other researchers and encouraged contact and collaboration with others. Message boards and e-mail mailing lists extended our research range and provided even more places to acquire information, albeit secondary or derivative evidence.