I have personally been working on family history since 2002.  In about 1976 my mother made notebooks for my siblings and me with a lot of family information.  A lot of the information in her notebookbook was given to her by her aunt who had been doing genealogy for many years.   She also visited some people and wrote letters.   About five years before I "got the genealogy bug" my sister bought a family tree program and entered everything from our mother's notebook into the program -  she gave a copy to me. 

My father-in-law was also interested in his family history and made copies of documents he found along the way.  I always put everything he gave me into a folder but didn't try to put it into any format. 

The one area where there wasn't very much information was my father's side.  My sister and a cousin found a little on this side - his grandparents belonged to a large group of Low German speaking Mennonites who were born in Russia and emigrated to Manitoba, Canada.  The Manitoba Mennonites have been very generous with their records and I was able to find their ship records as well as other church records on line.  

The best thing that has happened is that I have made contact with many new relatives and have spent more time with cousins that I didn't see for many years.  After finding out about my deceased relatives, I realized I should get to know my living relatives.