Organize Your Family History

Stay focused and happy while exploring your roots

Quick Tip #1: Rename your document as soon as you download it

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I’ve decided to offer some bite-size Quick Tips every now and again that might help you in organizing your genealogy research. I’m going to kick it off with one of my favorite tips; it’s the best habit I’ve developed when it comes to my genealogy research.

 

Rename your document as soon as you download it

If you’ve ever downloaded a document from FamilySearch or Ancestry, you’re familiar with the outrageously long alphanumeric file name that comes with the file. My suggestion is to develop a file-naming protocol and immediately change the filename so that you won’t lose the document on your hard drive. Ideally, you’d process the document (i.e. enter information from it into your genealogy software and create a source citation) right away. But if the file has to languish for awhile, if you change the filename you’ll at least be able to tell at a glance what it is.

The protocol that works for me is Year Type of Document-Ancestor Name-Locality.ext.

So, for example, the death certificate for one of my second greatgrandfathers is named 1936 Death Certificate-John D. Jeffries-Rockville Bates Missouri.jpg.

That works for me–you may have one that works better for you. But the point is to have an easy-to-remember protocol that gives you an informative file name. Then rename a document the moment you download. Bonus tip:  Once downloaded, move the renamed into an appropriate folder. (Mine goes into a folder called Surnames.)

Photo by Sam Dan Truong on Unsplash

Stacy Julian reopening her 20in20 online course (for a good cause)

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I became a huge fan of Stacy Julian when I heard her speak at RootsTech. After RootsTech, I shared details of her talk Do Something with that Box! here and I referenced it in my own talk, The Imperfect Genealogist.

Stacy is all about helping people tell stories, particularly family stories. I’m on her mailing list and I received an email this week that she is her reopening her yearlong online course, 20in20. Here’s a short video about the course.

In a nutshell, participants will create 20 projects over the course of a year. It was originally intended to take place in the calendar year 2020. Enrollment closed months ago. But that changed this week. Stacy wrote in her email:

“As I have contemplated current events—especially those that have exposed racial inequality in the United States—I have made the decision to reopen 20in20 and donate ALL of the proceeds to organizations and efforts making a difference for people of color.”

I was very impressed by this and I asked her if I could share the information here. Here’s another great piece of news. The price has been cut in half–to $60–to encourage enrollment. See the 20in20 page on Stacy’s website for where and how she’s donating the proceeds and to sign up.

This strikes me as an amazing opportunity to create some wonderful projects, with the help of an amazing teacher, at a big discount and to do good at the same time. I just had to share.

NGS 2020 virtual family history conference recordings available for purchase

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The National Genealogical Society made some serious lemonade when it figured out what to deal with their conference, which was to be held in May in Salt Lake City, in the face of the COVID-19 crisis. Rather than cancelling it, they made it virtual. As I understand it, this is what they did. (It’s relevant today because you can now purchase recordings of the presentations that would have been made at the conference.)

Registrants for the conference could watch five featured presentations live. Well, sort of live, on May 20. The presentations from Judy Russell, Blaine Bettinger, Elizabeth Shown Mills, Thomas Wright Jones and storyteller and re-enactor Stephanie Raff, were pre-recorded (to prevent technical snafus) and streamed on May 20. The presenters monitored the live chat during the streaming of their recorded presentations so that registrants had a more live, conference-like experience.

There were also three sponsored sessions that were presented as part of the live event on May 20. And another 18 sponsored bonus sessions were recorded.

See this page for a list of the NGS Live! presentations and sponsored presentations.

The rest of the conference presenters–a total of 85 presentations–recorded their lectures, which will be available for streaming. See this page for a list of those presentations.

If you’re interested in watching the NGS lectures, there are three streaming packages available. They all include the 26 above-mentioned featured presentations and bonus sessions and the syllabus.

  • Light package: Your choice of 10 sessions, plus the 26 additional sessions for $150 for NGS members/$185 for non-members.
  • Full package: Your choice of 20 sessions, plus the 26 additional sessions, for $215 for members/$250 for non-members.
  • The Works: Your choice of 45 sessions, plus the additional 26 sessions, for $395 for members/$430 for non-members.

These are available for purchase now; you can choose your OnDemand sessions on June 15 and on July 1, the OnDemand sessions will be released. Once purchased, the subscriptions run from 1 July 2020 to 15 May 2021.

I applaud the ingenuity of the conference planners! They managed to make the content available for the registrants as well as those hadn’t been planning to attend the conference. The presenters still had the chance to create their content for an audience. And I love that people can choose from among all the classes.

I’ve attended the NGS conference twice and both times the classes I took were top notch. I think this is a great opportunity to learn some great stuff at your own pace.

Help your kids know your heirlooms’ stories

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A reader of this blog, Jacqueline Krieps Schattner, sent me a link to a post she wrote recently on her genealogy blog, Seeds to Tree, that described the decluttering she’s been doing during the pandemic (she’s used her time very well!). The blog post also presented an idea that I think is absolutely genius, so I asked her permission to write about it here (and also on the Peace of Mind Organizing blog).

Jacquie’s decluttering work during the pandemic has been very thorough. She got so much done that she turned her attention to an area that’s usually last on the list: the family treasures around her home. In her post, Pandemic De-Cluttering and a Heirloom Book, Jacquie described taking stock of some of the treasures she has collected over 40 years of marriage (and inherited from her parents and grandparents). She’s still enjoying them and has no interest in letting them go. But when she started thinking about what will happen to these heirlooms if she and her husband were to downsize or were not around to explain the significance of each piece, she came up with an important piece of wisdom:

Heirlooms without stories are just stuff.

Jacquie came up with a great idea for making sure her daughters would know the stories of the individual items. She created a book with photos of each of the heirlooms, complete with captions that capture all the stories. That way, when the time comes, her daughters will be able to make informed decisions about which of these heirlooms they would like to keep. She titled the book, Why Did We Save This?

Jacquie spells out in detail how she went about creating the book (via Shutterfly), what it looks like, and what she’s done with the copies. This is such a helpful idea that I’m thrilled to share it! Thanks for allowing me to write about it, Jacquie!