Family history can either be in the form of a printed document, electronic document or sound or video recording that preserves this history for future generations. The readers will expect it to describe where the family originated from, name the members of the family and state who they married.

Family Histories are often created as a memorial for the deceased and are written to be passed down to future generations.

Today many people are using these old records to recover their family history. But most of these records include only technical details of a person''s life, such as their birth date, whom they married, the jobs they did, and so forth, but they contain very little about the person themselves such as their likes, dislikes, hobbies, hopes and dreams.

Some records that are used to create family histories are:

• Apprenticeship records
• Baptism or christening records
• Birth certificates
• Cemetery records and tombstones
• Census records
• Coroner''s reports
• Death records
• Diaries, personal letters, family Bibles, scrapbooks and ephemera
• Directories - trade directories, street directories, telephone directories
• Earlier family histories
• Marriage records
• Military records
• Newspapers - both news items and advertisements
• Property records and contemporary maps
• Public records - Social Security records (in the U.S.), Poor Law records (in the UK), registers of electors
• Tax records
• Wills and probate records

Family history websites and indexes are also useful, and for modern researchers they are often the main source of information. Some offer resources (eg censuses or civil registration records) that have previously only been available in microform or as hard copies; some are designed for individual researchers to share their information with others; some exist primarily to link people who share the same ancestors, or the same research interests.