Our project this week is as follows:
- We need to have an organizational plan for our hard drive.
- Develop a naming format for our digital files.
- In order to make it easier to find files, we should consider the use of "tags" or metadata.
I’ll be addressing the use of tags/metadata in a separate post as it is an area I’m working to improve upon.
Hard drive organizational scheme
Here is a basic outline of my hard drive organization as it relates to genealogy:
· Dropbox
o Genealogy
§ 1Research to Process
§ Admin – contains conference syllabi, newsletters, magazines, citation info, templates and other files not directly related to my family. In other words, stuff important to me but probably not so much to descendants.
§ Census worksheets all families
§ Heirloom Book - This is where the digital copy of my Heirloom Book is stored along with many other photos of family heirlooms.
§ Locations
§ Michelles Tree – Organized by surname and then record types Tip: Don’t include punctuation other than a dash or underscore in your folder or file names as it can cause problems. That’s why there’s no apostrophe in “Michelles Tree”.
Photos – organized by surname and a few by cemeteries
Programs – Data files for genealogy programs
File Naming Format
Surname_FirstName_YYYY-MM-DD_DocumentType_
- Sometimes after Document Type, I include locality or short description depending on the situation and length of the file name. We don’t want to let those file names become too long!
- For photos, after the year, I might include short description or location depending on the situation and length of the file name.
- By keeping as consistent as possible with the name and date format, I can pretty much get the documents or photos relating to a particular person or family in order by year.
© 2011, copyright Michelle Goodrum
