Apologies for my spotty blogging of late. My computer dying made last week challenging and this week I got a booster shot and needed a day two to recover. So my productivity has been hampered! But my computer and I are now healthy and I’m looking forward to getting back into the swing of more regular blogging.
As I ponder the ideas I have for posts, I figured it would be smart to ask my readers what they’re curious to read. Are there genealogy organizing topics that you’d like to see me write about? Any struggles with your organization efforts that you think I might be able to help with by blogging?
Please tell me in the comments. And please don’t censor yourself. I welcome as many suggestions as you’d like to make!
Anything on going from paper to digital; how you do your digital organization.
Thanks so much! (I will mention that if you really want detail on my digital organization, you can buy my How I Do It guide–just click on Orderly Roots Guides above). But I’ll plan to write a blog post on the paper to digital transition!
One thing I’m struggling with now is storage space on my computer, Documents I’ve downloaded such as census returns are large and take up a fair amount of storage. I typically have downloaded the whole return but now I’m wondering whether to crop the doc so it shows only the people of interest and not their neighbours. Thoughts?
I think keeping the full census is important in case you want to do cluster research. So personally I wouldn’t crop them. I’d look for other ways to save storage space or perhaps upgrade my hard drive/cloud storage account so I had more space!
I thought about this a lot since I saw your reply. Agree that having the full sheet would help with the fan research. But then I reasoned that these records are readily available on multiple sites so if I do need them I can always look them up and download at that time
It’s all about what’s important to you, right? If conserving disk space is more important than having the full census available to you when you want to look at it, then your idea is a good one for you. I always worry (perhaps I’m paranoid) that records won’t be available to me in the future, so I like to download them.
I like your interviews with other Genealogist and family historians and enjoy what they share in tips or experience that can help others. I especially liked how you made your map that you pinned about your ancestors, things like that I find very interesting in showing about your ancestors to your family. Keep up the good work!
Thanks, Steven! I appreciate the reminder that I need to read out to more genealogy luminaries for interviews. I like those interviews a lot too. And I’m glad you like my genealogy map. It might be time for me to add another generation to it!
Do you have a way to organize photos? I have most of mine in boxes. I also have some digitalized.
I have to admit that photos are among my least favorite things to organize, so I don’t write about photo organizing much. But I will ponder writing about that topic, Deborah. Thank you!
Can you talk about where to start? I have hundreds of files in folders on my laptop (lost track of what I have). I also have 8 plastic bins filled with documents. I plan to go paperless (only keep key documents). I need to get a handle on this before re-inputting my data.
Sue, thanks so much for your comment. That is an excellent topic and I don’t know that I’ve addressed it before. One thing I will suggest right now is that if you plan to go paperless and you’re actively researching, don’t feel like you have to wait for your backlog to be digitized before you start the paperless process. Figure out how your file-naming protocol and folder structure now and start with the next document you find.
I agree Janine -File Naming protocol and Folder structure is key
Thanks for your comment, John. File-naming protocol and folder structure give us confidence in our digital filing system.
I have recently retired and am interested in any routines that people have for family history e.g. scanning Monday, filing Tuesday, research Wednesday or that sort of thing. Also any news feeds that people subscribe to so that they keep up to date with new developments in their areas of interest.
Alex, what an interesting topic! I personally don’t have routines like that, but I can see how it would be valuable. Maybe others will share. I’ll try to write a post about that. As for the news feeds, some years ago, I asked people to tell us what genealogy blogs they read. I think it’s time for another post like that! Thanks for commenting.
I like the comment about having an item on going from paper to digital and the other one on organizing photos. Also, it you have any information on how to port your own family tree on your own website. I did it many years ago, but it got a little expensive on paying the host site.. I like your comment about “When is It Good Enough.” I get frustrated sometimes when I hear professional genealogist and it seems like you can spend a lifetime try to prove one item. I want to be accurate, but I want to have fun to.
Jerry, I’m with you on the good enough! In my presentation, The Imperfect Genealogist, I talk about good-enough source citations. Perhaps I need to turn that into a blog post. Accurate and fun are not mutually exclusive in genealogy!