Publish your family history

Provides advice and resources for publishing your family history.

Subject librarian

Family history guides

First steps

You’ve done all the hard work researching your family history. Now, you’d like to turn it into a publication. That’s why we’ve put together some guidelines to help you do this.

Before writing your family history you’ll need to think about its structure and the content you’d like to include. To help you get you started  we've selected a number of books on writing and publishing your family history. You also need to consider whether there are any copyright or privacy implications. Once you have completed writing and structuring your family history, you will move into the publishing phase.

Before publishing a book, we recommend that you acquire an International Standard Book Number (ISBN). You also have the opportunity to obtain a Cataloguing-in-Publication (CIP) entry.

After publishing, you are responsible for legal deposit (making a copy of your family history available in relevant Australian libraries) and also have the opportunity to enter family history awards.

You may also publish your family history online on the internet as a website or through a new hobby called digital scrapbooking.