Effective Sharing of Family History Information

Family history research is significantly enhanced when we collaborate using automated communication. Unfortunately, machine-to-machine communication can lead to unintended information modification or information loss. We propose the development of an exchange model that includes two sections. One represents common family history information whose organization and content are specified by an accepted standards committee. The first section should be comprehensive, but need not attempt to be all things to all people. The second section would include less common information and a conceptual model (or schema) to define the organization and semantics of that information. We briefly describe a powerful meta-model for defining such conceptual models. With this structure we can reduce or eliminate information loss when exchanging information using computerized tools.