This introduces risk of copying errors. More mistakes to be corrected when discovered. But with a computer, we simply enter the correct information and punch the print key and the computer prints a new corrected form. Those of you who have had to recopy a family group sheet for a family of half a dozen or more children know how much fun making corrections is. But this is only the beginning of the value of computers.
Computers allow genealogists to exchange information almost effortlessly.
If Dorothy had her genealogy in a computer, she could have sent the data to me on a floppy diskette. I could have put the diskette in my computer and copied all of the data into my database by simply pressing a few keys. What may well take me 30 or 40 hours to keystroke into my computer, and which would take perhaps 100 or more hours to hand-copy, would take perhaps five or 10 minutes in a computer transfer. Yet another advantage of computerized genealogy is the phenomenal aid a computer is for publishing a book. Software programs such as Gen-Book convert data into narrative form, leaving the genealogist only to edit the narrative and print it.