If you want to put the info into a genealogy program so you have a family tree,
Brother's Keeper works well.
As for digitizing a book, Lornce has covered the basics. If you are going to do this yourself, I would recommend a good quality scanner capable of duplex sheet feeding. Single page scanning (open scanner, put down page, close scanner, scan page, open scanner, turn page over, close scanner, scan page, open scanner, remove page, put down new page...) gets old quickly... you might run out of black currant port before you're done 500 pages
ARG