Oct. 3 (Bloomberg) -- If you are researching your family history, the best thing about the Internet is the vast amount of information available. Records, recollections and resources previously accessible only to those with the time and money to travel to distant locales are now mouse clicks away.

That flood of data is also the worst thing about the Internet. Locating information can be hit or miss; older records are often poorly indexed or unintelligible; cataloging your finds and establishing relationships can be a confusing, time- consuming operation.

There’s a vast array of software to help find and organize family information. One of the oldest and most widely used is Family Tree Maker. I’ve been trying out the 2010 edition, which was released last month, and can report that it’s polished and powerful, though it quickly becomes an expensive proposition if you intend to get the most out of it.

Family Tree Maker, which has gone through a number of makeovers and owners since it was introduced some 20 years ago, is currently published by Ancestry.com Inc., the Provo, Utah- based company that recently signaled plans for an initial public offering. In the last several years, Ancestry.com has been buying up, and charging for access to, genealogy Web sites and other related assets all over the Internet, to the point where it’s now inescapable for anyone doing even casual family research.

Influenza Epidemic

While you don’t need to use Family Tree Maker to access this data, the software provides a useful “front end” with multiple hooks into the Ancestry Web sites. For instance, I have been using the software to locate and organize information about the Lerners, the family of my paternal grandmother, who died at age 25 during the great influenza epidemic of 1918-1919.

Through conversations with an elderly aunt, I learned enough to be able to locate U.S. Census records from 1900 that gave me the names of my great-grandparents -- as well as various great-uncles and aunts I never knew I had. Had I recorded video or audio of my conversation with my aunt -- which I should have done -- I could have saved that to Family Tree Maker, too.

Family Tree Maker offers several ways to share and publish information, including uploading your tree to Ancestry.com, where other users might be able to help fill in blanks. Trees can be imported and exported from other genealogy software in the GEDCOM format, the de facto standard developed by the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints. I used the software to import a file created in another program on a Mac; the tree of more than 70 people arrived requiring minimal clean-up.

Mac Alternatives

Family Tree Maker is for Microsoft Windows only; Mac users who want to use it will need a copy of Windows plus Apple’s free Boot Camp program or virtualization software such as VMware Inc.’s Fusion or Parallels Inc.’s Desktop.

Then again, several Mac-specific programs provide similar, if not quite such exhaustive, functionality. These include Reunion, for $99.95 from Leister Productions Inc., and MacFamilyTree, for $49.95 from Synium Software. Both also sell separate, paid applications for Apple’s iPhone that synchronize with their desktop versions, making it easier to collect and integrate information gleaned from in-person research.

You can use Family Tree Maker to create and print various types of charts and reports, and even design custom-made books, posters and calendars that you can order from a site called MyCanvas.com, at extra expense.

Ah yes, the expense. Even if you don’t order bound volumes, it’s easy for the costs to mount quickly.

Three Versions

The software itself comes in three flavors. The basic $29.99 version includes only the core program and a one-month Ancestry.com subscription. The $69.99 Deluxe edition adds a “reference library” DVD that includes PDF versions of 10 guidebooks, many dating from the 1990s, on topics such as how to scour military or immigration records, and three months of Ancestry.com access. For $30 more, the Platinum edition has a DVD with 16 books, and a six-month subscription.

But that’s only the beginning. Unless you have enough time to make a major, immediate and intensive commitment, you may end up renewing your Ancestry.com subscription, and it won’t be cheap: $155 a year, or $19.95 a month, for a membership that gives you access to U.S. records, and $300 a year, or $29.95 a month, for a world membership that brings in documents from the U.K., Canada, Ireland and elsewhere, as well as the U.S.

Then there’s the DNA test, the magazine subscription -- you get the idea. You could get to $500 in expenses before you know it, and, like the Internet itself, it seems like there’s always one more thing. That kind of money might be good news if you are thinking of investing in the IPO, but maybe not so wonderful if it’s coming out of your own pocket.

(Rich Jaroslovsky is a Bloomberg News columnist. The opinions expressed are his own.)

To contact the writer of this column: Rich Jaroslovsky in New York at rjaroslovsky@bloomberg.net.

Last Updated: October 1, 2009 21:00 EDT