I polled readers last month to find out what you’d like to read here. The top vote getter was “Organizing tips and tricks.” I’m in my tenth year as a professional organizer, so, as you can imagine, I have a lot of organizing tricks up my sleeve. But in thinking about what to share with you, I realized it would be really helpful to know your biggest challenges with regard to organizing your family history research.
So can you please help me help you by letting me know what you struggle with?
Is it setting up a filing system? Keeping track of sources? Finding things on your hard drive? A cluttered genealogy workspace? No genealogy workspace? Finding time to do research? Not letting genealogy research take over your life? A backlog of stuff that needs to be organized?
Please don’t limit yourself to those suggestions. Just post a comment stating any and all genealogy-related organizing challenges so I can try to address them in future posts.
Thank you!
Oh my! I just moved from California to Salt Lake City and still unpacking…my top three organization dilemmas…1. Paper, 2. Paper, 3. Paper. I see a theme here! Mostly genealogy , books and the detritus of life, taxes, receipts, the stuff of life. To be honest, shoes are a bit of a dilemma too!
I do have a backlog of things to enter into my program/source. However, probably my biggest organizing dilemma is dealing with To Do’s. I will find a new record set, usually from a blog I just read, decide to put whatever set I had been working on to the side, look at the new set for a bit, find a newer set, etc…. And of course in that process, I have docs of people who might be related, but I am not sure how. At times I forget to go back to record sets to see if I have added the “might be” info. Hope this makes sense
1. Finding things on your hard drive?
Its like being in the middle of the ocean
2. A cluttered genealogy workspace?
Everything is in boxes I have so many items to do in each box one project is transcripting my great grandfather journal I’m on day 35 and have 400+ to go.
3. A backlog of stuff that needs to be organized?
4. Finding time to do research?
Running a one-person business and doing genealogy research well the two have all the time [especially the business] that i have.
5. No genealogy workspace?
6. Keeping track of sources?
8. Is it setting up a filing system?
paper no problem computer major problem how to relater the paper files to the computer guiles i just started with reunion 10.
9. Not letting genealogy research take over your life?
All of the above! Organizing and finding materials including ancestor photos on my hard drive is my biggest problem.
Finding time to do research! That’s a big one for me. I am our county’s archivist/records manager and I am also a professional genealogist. While I don’t take clients, I mainly speak and teach. You would think that since my jobs are in the field of archives and genealogy I could be organized enough to do my own research. However, it’s kind of like the old addage “house painters are so busy they can’t even paint their own house”. I am like that. I am so busy running our county archives and helping others with their genealogy that I can’t seem to find time to do my own. Any help appreciated.
Janine,
I want to let you know that your blog post is listed in today’s Fab Finds post at http://janasgenealogyandfamilyhistory.blogspot.com/2014/11/follow-friday-fab-finds-for-november-21.html
Have a wonderful weekend!
Thanks so much, Jana! I hope you have a great weekend too.
I would have to say organizing my 1) digitized genealogy photos & documents; 2) best storage for said, digitized genealogy photos and documents; 3) emails with information from family (cousins, etc) and ideas for research.
Currently, I have had to replace a desktop and a laptop and I have approximately 4 external/portable drives with lots of redundancy, but I don’t think all of it is on multiple items.
Thanks, everyone, for sharing! Keep ’em coming!
My office is partially organized. I need to complete the major project of “merging” my older surname-based filing system into my newer document-based filing system. I want my office to be organized enough that I can say: “I have that document (or photo, or hand-drawn family tree showing a particular relationship), and I know exactly where to find it.”
I also need to improve my computer filing system.
Converting my paper documents to digital and then keeping them organized in my computer. Also options for backing up.
At this point (there will be more later) my biggest problem is where and how to organize and digitize photos and documents. I don’t know the best place to set my files up. Then, of course,I need to choose filing plan. I have been studying various plans for filing, but have not been able to make a decision .
My biggest frustration in creating and organizing my digital files is deciding what format to use – tiff for archival, PDFs for multi page documents, jpg to reduce file size, all three, or some combination thereof? Sometimes I have several copies of the same file because I have had this dilemma for so long.
Ditto on scanning documents and photos … with this specific: how to begin the .jpg or .doc filename: 1) with a date? (2014-11-25 …), 2) with a name? (Weeks, Theodore …), or 3) with a description (Headstone of …)
I appreciate your sharing your challenges in the comments!! They’ll definitely give me fodder for future blog posts. I welcome additional comments as well. Thank you!
My biggest problem is keeping focused on my research. I can’t keep up with all the new information that is coming online and go off on different tangents all the time. I have a colour-coded system for paper files in place but still tend to place loose sheets in a file “to file later”. My digital filing system is still a work in progress and my back-up plan definitely needs improvement. Many thanks for your ongoing suggestions.
Oy, all of the above!
I have a backlog of info not filed or added to my software (Rootsmagic) and may have lost or misplaced underlying documentation info.
I lack focus – I’d much rather jump around searching for documents than actually enter them into the software – and after several years away from genealogy I’m just all over the place.
I have a paper file system, however, over the intervening years have moved to digital files for just about everything else so would like to set up filing of new documents digitally at least. So I’m kind of “stuck” on filing systems.
And probably not organizing related – I started off with inconsistent documentation so much of what I have isn’t strongly documented, or documented correctly. And my little bit of excess perfectionism gets paralyzed at wanting to do it “right.”