Organize Your Family History

Stay focused and happy while exploring your roots

It’s Preservation Week! What should you keep?

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davebealetterThis week is Preservation Week, according to the Association for Library Collections and Technical Services. That makes it a great time to think about preserving our inherited items.

Denise Levenick, The Family Curator, has a tremendous post on her blog about how to decide what to keep and what to throw away when it comes to inherited items. I strongly urge you to take a look.

Her post really resonated with me, because I work with clients all the time on deciding on what to keep and what to let go of. Usually, it’s stuff they purchased, not inherited. That’s tough enough. Inherited items are much more challenging to decide about. Denise’s blog post provides some great guidelines and great questions to ask yourself as you make these decisions.

There are two principles that I say to clients all the time and that I think hold true with inherited items as well:

  • Less is more
  • When you keep everything, nothing is special

When I read this statement in Denise’s blog post, I said “Yes!”

 Sometimes, it’s ok to give yourself permission to hold on to the memory and let go of the clutter.

If you struggle with deciding what to keep among your inherited items, you’ll get some great insight with Denise’s post.

Where are your family treasures?

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Where are your family treasures?This week, I was working with a wonderful organizing client. As she gave me a tour of the storage spaces in her home, she said, “This is my most treasured possession!” And she bent down and pulled a plastic bin out from under the bed. Inside was her father’s World War II photo album, along with a few other war artifacts. The photo album had small black-and-white photos mounted onto black paper with meticulous white handwritten captions. The pages were deteriorating and some of the photos had fallen out of their mounting.

I oohed and ahhhed because it was an amazing heirloom. But I challenged her a little by saying, “Why is your most treasured possession stored under the bed in a non-archival plastic bin?” One day (soon, I hope), we will work together to get this item and some other heirlooms into safer storage.

That very same day, my mother’s cousin asked me for a photo of my grandfather for the genealogy poster he is putting together. So I rifled through the box of family photos that my mother gave me, trying to locate a good picture for him. As I did that, I realized that these photos are among my most treasured possessions, yet I am not treating them with the respect they deserve. They’re not archivally stored, nor are they organized.

When I acquired this box in December, I blogged about my plan to deal with them. But I’ve done nothing. I keep waiting for a free block of time.  should know by now that the free time is never going to materialize on its own. I have to set aside time for this project. Luckily for me, this branch of the family is having a reunion in a couple of months, so I can get some help identifying the people in these photos!

How about you? Do you have treasured inherited items that are languishing in unsafe conditions? If you need information on how to handle and store them, check out Sally Jacobs of The Practical Archivist and Denise Levenick of The Family Curator. Don’t wait for something bad to happen. Carve out some time to deal with them now.

Are you attending Midwestern Roots Family History and Genealogy Conference?

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Midwestern Roots 2014 ConferenceI’m very excited! I just registered for the Indiana Historical Society’s Midwestern Roots Family History and Genealogy Conference, August 1 and 2 in Indianapolis. Indy is within driving distance for me, so when I saw the caliber of the offerings at this conference, it was a no-brainer to sign up. Presenters include Thomas MacEntee of Geneabloggers and High Definition Genealogy; Lisa Louise Cooke of Genealogy Gems (in fact, I found out about the conference through Lisa’s newsletter); Anne Gillespie Mitchell of Ancestry.com, and Warren Bittner, genealogical researcher and trustee for the Board for Certification of Genealogists, among other great speakers.

I also signed up for a pre-conference session on preserving original family documents, presented by Romana Duncan-Huse, senior director of conservation at the Indiana Historical Society. I’m very interested in continuing my education on preserving inherited items.

If you’re an avid conference-goer like me and live near Indianapolis or wouldn’t mind traveling there, I encourage you to check out the program at the link above. At only $150, it’s a very moderately priced conference.

If you plan to attend, please let me know!

Find genealogy files on your computer with metadata

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Brown family, before trip to Nebraska, 1922Brown family, before trip to Nebraska, 1922AJ Brown meat marketAs I mentioned in my last blog post, being able to easily access my genealogy research findings is critical to me. I’m creating a reasonable file structure on my hard drive, but I can’t put a ton of information about a document in the file name. Happily, there’s a way I can find all the documents or photographs pertaining to one thing (like a location or a surname) and that’s by tagging my files with metadata.

When I went to RootsTech last month, I heard a couple of talks on metadata (one Mac focused, one PC focused). So I know more than I did  before the conference, but I’m certainly no expert. Here’s a brief primer on metadata, with links to more in-depth information.

What is metadata?

The word metadata literally means “data about data.” So it’s information about what’s in a file or a photo. Think about a caption with info scribbled beneath is or on the back, saying who is in the picture, where it was taken, and when. That’s metadata. You can attach the same sort of information to your digital photos and scans, embedded in the file, without marring the photo.

If you’re familiar with tagging a document with keywords in Evernote or Springpad, you’ll understand the concept. Think also how you tag people in photographs in Facebook. Just use terms you can imagine searching on.

How do you add metadata?

Very generally, you add metadata by right-clicking on a file within the Windows Explorer or Mac Finder, then clicking on Properties (Windows) or Get Info (Mac). On a Windows machine, you’d then click on Properties, then on the third tab, Details. You’ll see a form you can fill in with varying types of data. On a Mac, it’s a little more free form. After clicking Get Info, you fill in the tags you want in the Spotlight Comments section at the top of the info window. Use a semicolon to separate tags.

You can also download software specifically for adding metadata. I need to research that more for my own files. I do know that I want to keep this as simple as possible.

Why bother using metadata?

Even in the most organized file structure, you can only fit so many characters in a file name. And long file names can become unwieldy. Embedding metadata allows you to easily find the files you’re looking for, even if the search terms aren’t those you’d put in a filename. Also, the information stays with the file when you share it. The photo above, of my great grandfather’s meat market in Nebraska, has no metadata attached to it, except that the name of the cousin who sent it to me. I have many photos like that and I hope to make them more meaningful by embedding metadata.

How can you learn more about metadata?

I know I’m not giving you a whole lot of information here, partly because I use a Mac and don’t have a Windows machine at my fingertips to test things on.  Here are some online resources to help you get started.

My goal with this post was to make you aware of the concept and the utility of metadata and urge you to consider tagging your documents. Don’t worry about being perfect. Any data you add will be helpful.