And there's no friendlier, more sharing group than genealogists. But technology is changing that, making genealogy an increasingly solitary preoccupation. There is less need to leave one's home to pursue progenitors around the globe, via the World Wide Web. The availability of old records on compact discs also is growing at an explosive rate. Most of the information available on the World Wide Web is free.
CDs cost some money, but wisely selected, they are a bargain.
They speed research and are a lot cheaper than traveling to distant libraries or record centers. Judging from my mail, Family Tree Maker must be the largest single source of CDs for genealogists. Family Tree Maker also is a computer software application for genealogy, and a good one. The company also produces the World Family Tree, a World Wide Web collection of 50 volumes of genealogies. They hold a combined 98 million names in 143,000 family trees.