Genealogy Should Be Free - Say What???

An offhand remark in a Facebook Group I am in started me thinking. A woman posted a query asking about a fee-based lookup service offered online. She asked if anyone had used it and was it a) legitimate and b) worth the money. 

As it happens I have used this service and think it is well worth the money, so I posted my experiences with it (all positive - reasonable fee, quick turnaround time, access to records I cannot access personally)

Then came the comment from a woman who said she would never use that site or any site that charged money for genealogy because, in her words, "Genealogy should be free". 

I didn't respond but I wondered if she realized how much time and money is put into gathering records to put online. Big companies are obviously a business entity and their objective is to make a profit, not to provide us genealogists with great grandpa's death certificate for free. Our plumber or electrician or dentist or grocery stores or clothing stores are not providing us with free services so I shake my head at the notion that a company or an individual should. 

If  "genealogy should be free" then by extension the basic necessities of life should also be free! That would mean that food, shelter, and clothing would all be free. Grocery stores should not be charging for food, farmers would spend their lives working for the joy of it... and on and on it would go. I wonder if those who believe that "genealogy should be free" can see how ridiculous a statement that is?

Some people do give their time and expertise for free some of the time. Doctors might travel to other countries to provide free medical care for a month or a year but when they go back home they charge for those same services. 

What is involved in a large company putting data online? The expense of acquiring the database - in time and possibly money. It can take months of negotiations to get a local archive or church to agree to having their records published. Then there is the time and money on hiring people to scan, transcribe and index the records. Add to that the personnel hired to set up and maintain the database, the programmers needed to run the website which the web developers created (these are all jobs that individuals are paid to do) 

What about an individual who has a lookup service such as the one first mentioned? In this specific case, this man creates indexes to previously unindexed records. That's a huge job! He has spent a great deal of time on this. Then he offers, at a very reasonable fee, to go to the Archives and retrieve a record if you find an ancestor in his indexes. Why on earth would anyone think he should do this for free? I say good for him for a) providing a way for those of us living far away to obtain those records and b)finding a creative way to make a bit of money from something he obviously loves doing

Not everyone is independently wealthy or financially stable enough to volunteer hundreds of hours to help other genealogists. Nor do some people want to do such charitable activities.

Genealogists familiar with my website Olive Tree Genealogy know that I have thousands of genealogy records online - for free. Yep, that's right - free. I spend my time and/or money gathering records to provide for other genealogists at no cost to them. How do I do this? I took ads to earn some money from my website. Why? Because it was a choice - continue working at my paid job outside the home and not have a website with these wonderful records OR give up my job, and devote my time to a website offering free genealogy records - and that meant taking ads as a way to help offset the income I lost by quitting my paying job. 

I also think the woman who made the original comment that she would never pay for genealogy, overlooked the fact that if she goes to a local library or archive, she is no doubt paying for some kind of transportation. Other expenses are often involved - money for lunches, for parking, for a babysitter, for photocopies..... rarely is anything actually "free". For me a huge factor too is the convenience of having records online and the ease of access which frees up my time to do other things.

The bottom line is that we live in a world where individuals are compensated for the work that they do. This is how our society functions. Why anyone would expect someone to work long hours providing the rest of us with a free service makes no sense. Sure it's wonderful if someone does volunteer their time and money to help others - and there are lots of volunteer organizations to be found for those who have the time and the inclination. But on a day to day basis, it is usually the case that we humans get up, go out to our jobs, then come home - and we expect a pay check at the end of it. And there's nothing wrong with wanting or needing to be paid for the work we do.

Is Genealogy a Hobby?

Lisa made an interesting comment in response to my post called It Boggles My Mind which is a blog post about how I find it incredible that there are people who are not the least bit interested in their family history.

Lisa disagreed with me when I referred to genealogy as a hobby.

"I disagree on one thing you said though, this is NOT a hobby. It is much more than that. I call it my life's work. We are writing and preserving history and without the genealogists of today, much will be lost tomorrow. "

Lisa has a good point. I agree that we are writing and preserving history (as well as finding facts). I agree that genealogy is important.

But is it indeed a hobby? Or something more ... what else can we call this activity we engage in? 

Let's first look at the actual definition of the word HOBBY

A hobby is defined as an activity or interest pursued outside one's regular occupation and engaged in primarily for pleasure.

* I pursue genealogy in my spare time.

* I research my family tree for pleasure, not profit.

* I am passionate, perhaps even obsessed about my ancestors and genealogy.

* Research into my Genealogy is not my full-time job.

It seems to me then that my pursuit of genealogy fits the definition of a hobby.

I don't believe that applying the term "hobby" is necessarily negative. I don't think that calling an activity a hobby is demeaning. The common pre-conception may be that a hobby is little more than an entertaining distraction from life, but that's not an accurate definition.

As far as I'm concerned, if you don't pursue genealogy as a full time "JOB" which pays your bills, then it's a hobby. It can be a passionate, all-consuming hobby. It can be, as Lisa says, your life's work. You can be 100% committed to finding and preserving your family history. But if you are paying your bills by working at some occupation other than genealogist, you are engaging in a hobby.

I'm interested in what others think. Do you have a good word for what we avid genealogists engage in? I'm open to suggestions for a term other than "hobby" but until I hear one that fits, I'm still going to say that I have a hobby I love, called genealogy. It's my passion, it's all-consuming, and I think it's incredibly important to find and document my ancestral trail, but in the end it's my hobby.