Category Archives: Digitizing Genealogy Records
What do I do with the small scraps of paper, hastily scribbled ideas and the sticky notes plastered everywhere!
Scanner – Photo courtesy of sri_grafix at stock.xchng.com
After writing yesterday’s blog post on digitizing my genealogy records I started to mentally plan the process. It wasn’t long before I realized I had left out a component.
If you take a quick peek at yesterday’s post you’ll see I’m taking a pledge to reduce paperwork but my plan only addresses actual documents as they relate to myself and my ancestors. If I’m to attempt a paperless desk (attempt being the key word here!) I need to eliminate the small scraps of papers on my desk with hastily scribbled notes and research ideas. Also the sticky notes plastered everywhere!
What do I do? I remembered a blog post some time ago by Marian over at Marian’s Roots and Rambles. I searched through her many excellent articles to find the one I remembered. Marian cites in her post: Taming all that Information! – Part 1
“The capturing of data for me can take these various forms but the filing of data remains consistent. I’m not sure if I discussed this in the webinar or not. I am not a paper person so I really don’t keep paper files (I will lose them!).
All of my information whether handwritten transcriptions, photographs or scans gets put into a project specific directory in my computer with a long descriptive filename. The longer I have been researching the longer my file names have become! I try to put
What do you think? Am I crazy? Digitizing my genealogy files.
Frustrated – Photo courtesy of Deboer at stock.xchng.com
And what’s so important that I’d look past the holiday to my “calm week” you ask? Let me tell you! I’ve taken the leap and made the commitment (to myself) to digitize my genealogy files. No longer will I be searching piles upon piles of papers for a copy of a handwritten letter by my great Aunt Sarah. No longer will I have small scraps of papers on my desk with hastily scribbled notes and research ideas. No longer will I have sticky notes plastered everywhere! No siree, not me!
The idea to digitize my family genealogy records comes from Joey Bowen. Joey is an IT guy and has used his computer knowledge to digitize his family history which is easily available on his computer and smart phone. Joey shared his digital genealogy organization methods at the Lima (OH) Family History Center back in October. (Please check this link when you’re finished with this post!) I was very fortunate to sit in on one of his classes, Now I Have It – How Do I Organize It.
