Archives for : November2014

How Do You Archive Your Records?

I didn’t work at all yesterday due to Veterans Day, but I did spend a good share of the afternoon the day before trying to clear out my Genealogy records.

I have two sets. I used to have four sets, so I’m getting better! I usually run with a working computer and an attached external hard drive. Periodically, I make sure everything on the computer makes it to the hard drive. Problem is, however, when the hard drive is full, I swap it with another external, fully intending to clean it off for reuse. I do eventually get to it, but not on any set schedule.

Anyway, I decided to try to combine the two so I had ONE set of files.I have software that reads and compares two drives, allowing me to delete duplicate files, but I couldn’t put my hands on it easily. Ignoring the external hard drive files, I decided to attack the computer files, instead.

I had two directories – one for my wife and related files, and one for mine. I found several things I could move out first to another location. Before I did a lot, however, I started a directory with folders based on surnames. I’ll let you know how that works out.

Everything I could find in our directories that could be tied to a name went into the new name folders. That made quite a dent in our two folders but left me with quite a few other files that didn’t fit. I needed other categories, so I cleaned up my older system of directories – Royalty, Historical Topics, Research Resources, Continents, Military, Immigration, and others – all folders I’ve used in the past to file Wikipedia information, books I’ve downloaded, e-mail sources I’ve collected, and so on.

As I moved things around, I found duplicate files and folders and used those opportunities to delete them. At the same time, I still have my untouched, albeit non-updated, external files if I should run into problems.

Keep in mind, these are just my DIGITAL files. I’ll discuss how I handle my PAPER files, books, and other things we end up with as we do our research. That’s a whole other story.

The lesson, I think is this – if you only have a few individuals or families to research, you don’t have a big problem organizing your data. As your research expands, so does the amount of material you end up storing.

If you have a lot of names, over 25,000 in my case, the job is not impossible, but it is daunting, at best.  I try to include a lot of information in my database, and I rely on it 100% for names, dates and places. Everything else is support material – sources, references, contacts, projects to undertake, background information, printouts, and so on for use while I’m working.

Now that I’ve found a few of those “gems” I knew I saved, they should begin to show up on this site.