Organize Your Family History

Stay focused and happy while exploring your roots

Now’s your chance to buy the Family Archivist Survival Kit

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Family Archivist Survival KitProper preservation of treasured family photographs and other historical documents is really important, as I discussed here recently. Unfortunately, it can also be a little laborious to track down the proper supplies. And it can be challenging to understand the steps that are really necessary for proper preservation.

Fortunately, there’s the Family Archivist Survival Kit, from Sally Jacobs, The Practical Archivist. Here’s the thing: Sally makes this available only in the month of October. So if you don’t order by November 4, you’ll have to wait another year.

The 2013 Family Archivist Survival Kit is actually four kits in one:

  • Loose Photo Kit
  • Documents and Ephemera Kit
  • Oversize Kit
  • Photo Rescue Kit (for salvaging photos from those horrible old-school “magnetic” adhesive photo albums)

The first three kits include appropriately sized archival boxes and archival interior folders or envelopes. All these items have passed the Photographic Activity Test (PAT). The Photo Rescue Kit includes hand-held tools (white gloves, two types of pencils and a microspatula). In addition, you get ten hours of recorded instruction from Sally’s Joy of Organizing Photos workshop and other informational goodies.

I ordered Sally’s Declutter Your Photos Like An Archivist kit a couple of months ago and am now a bona fide fan girl. A professional archivist, Sally not only knows her stuff, she understands and sympathizes with the challenges family archivists face. So her information is accessible and relevant.

I first stumbled upon Sally’s information last January and wanted to buy the Family Archivist Survival Kit at that moment. Alas, I had to wait until October and, believe me, I bought it the minute I read the email telling me the kit was available. If you’re interested, don’t delay. November 4 is the last day to buy one.

Photo of the Family Archivist Survival Kit courtesy of Sally Jacobs, The Practical Archivist.

 

Marrying my electronic and paper files

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Store census documents by pressing Print, rather than SaveI used to be a paper gal. But when it comes to my genealogy records, I’ve stopped pressing the Print button. At the moment almost all my genealogy research is being done online, so I’m really understanding the utility of clicking Save rather than Print.

Part of the reason I’ve been able to make the shift is that I’ve set up a good electronic file system. That gives me confidence that I’ll find what I need on my hard drive.

Switching from paper to electronic has ramifications in at least a couple of areas. It means that it’s changing how I do things from this point forward. That’s no problem. But it also means I have a backlog to deal with. In the past, I’d print and file census documents and other resources I found online, rather than save them electronically. While all the information are recorded in my software (I use Reunion), the source documents themselves might be in a file or might be on my hard drive.

So this week, I’ve been working on marrying the two systems. It’s going to be a long process. What I’m doing is taking out a file folder for a couple and going through the documents, making sure they’re included in my software and seeing if they’re on my hard drive. If they’re not, I’m finding them online and saving them within my file structure.

I’m also taking the opportunity to do one other thing while I’m in there. As I look at census documents, I’m adding siblings of my ancestors to my family tree software, something I blogged about doing a few months ago.

This may sound really tedious to you, but I’m having a good time. It’s allowing me to reacquaint myself with various couples and really pay attention to all their kids, not just my direct ancestor. It’s also giving me the chance to clean up my hard drive and re-file errant files (and move some documents that accidentally ended up in my Genealogy folder). I’m not going through each line systematically. To keep it interesting, I’m jumping from family to family, choosing file folders as my whims take me.

Since I’m no longer printing newly found documents, I guess I’m slowly phasing out my paper files. And that’s okay with me. My hard drive is fast, spacious, orderly, and backed up both to an external hard drive via Time Machine and to a remote computer via Crash Plan Pro.

I’m looking forward to the comfort of having everything on my hard drive. Since I store my paper files in a closet a few steps from my desk, I also love that my data will be at my fingertips whenever I’m using my computer. It’ll be great when I travel, especially if I take research trips, to have all that information available to me. I believe this will be time well spent.

Using a timer to aid your research

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Use a timer to keep you focused and capture small snippets of timeToday I have time to devote to some genealogy research. But I also have a couple of phone appointments and I need to work out at the gym. And my knitting group meets tonight. So my day is sort of chopped up.

Sometimes I get caught in the trap of feeling like I can’t start any family history research unless I have a large chunk of uninterrupted time ahead of me. The trouble with that I rarely have a large chunk of time available. So if I wait, I won’t get much done.

This morning at 11 am, knowing that I wanted to go to the gym at about 11:30, I sent the timer on my iPhone for 25 minutes. It served a couple of purposes:

  • It kept me focused on the research until the timer went off
  • It kept me from losing myself in the research and missing going to the gym
  • Stopping at the end of 25 minutes kept me chomping at the bit to do more research, so later today I’ll be able to set my timer again and get more work done.

I think that fear of getting lost in the work sometimes prevents me from starting, so the timer really is my friend. And I’m always amazed at what I can get done in short bursts of time.

In his book, Do It Tomorrow and Other Secrets of Time Management, author Mark Forster talks about timed bursts and how taking breaks increases productivity (versus working long stretches of time). He advocates using a timer and cautions to stop the moment the timer goes off, so that you want to get back to work when the break is over. The brain craves completion, he explains.

My intention is to use the timer throughout the day and see if I can wedge in at least two hours of genealogy time in my day.

Next time you have a short period of time to do some family history research, pull out a timer and see if it helps!

The importance of proper preservation

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disintegrating scrapbook croppedI recently purchased the Declutter Your Photos Like an Archivist kit from Sally Jacobs, The Practical Archivist. The kit came with some great supplies and some wonderful info. And it included four live webchats with Sally last month for people who purchased the kits.

Great stuff. Great learning.

My takeaway was how important it is to properly store family keepsakes on paper so that acid doesn’t destroy them over time. It takes more effort. It’s more expensive. And the end result is that future generations will be able to enjoy and benefit from these precious items.

This is all well and good in theory. The application of it, however, can feel cumbersome, as I discovered when helping a client sort through World War II-related items left behind by her grandfather and father.

Then we found her father’s scrapbook, a page of which is pictured above. He obviously took so much care in putting it together. When he was alive, he refused to speak to his children about his war experiences and didn’t even let them look at his scrapbook. Now that he’s gone, his daughter can learn a little about his experience through this precious book.

But here’s the thing: The scrapbook is literally disintegrating. The papers held within are in okay shape. But the brittle, yellowed scrapbook pages were clearly made from acidic paper and they crumble at the touch. I’m hopeful that my client will make it a priority to rescue the items held inside the scrapbook and perhaps replicate it in an acid-free environment.

I so appreciate this reminder of the importance of proper preservation if papers are to survive to be enjoyed by future generations. Any time I hesitate to go to the trouble and expense, I’ll remind myself of this scrapbook.