FINALLY Get Organized: January Report

 I love organization. Lately it seems like there aren't enough hours in the day to get organized and stay that way! So I am excited that Dear Myrtle is doing her "FINALLY Get Organized!" series.

http://blog.dearmyrtle.com/p/finally-get-organized.html

January has been a challenging month with the Salt Lake Institute of Genealogy and some family issues. But I've managed some big accomplishments.

My desk and computer work space is pristine. I feel like a ton of bricks have been lifted off my back. I can actually find things on my desk because all of the piles are gone. There are no distractions now that I have the one thing I'm working on sitting on my desk. The best part is that I cleaned up the desk the first week of January and here it is the last week of the month and it's still clean! 

My notebook system is pretty similar to what Dear Myrtle wants us to set up. But I did have some glaring holes! There was no section for myself or sibling. Oops! Also, while I do have sections set up for Dad and his parents, some important documents weren't included. Honestly, I just couldn't bring myself to put Dad's death certificate in there. But it's time. While I was at it, there were a couple of birth and marriage documents that I added, scanned, attached to my RootsMagic database and transcribed. Sometimes we get so wrapped up with chasing down the ancestors we didn't personally know, we forget to properly organize the more recent generations. 

I still have boxes and boxes of papers belonging to my parents and grandparents that I'm slowly organizing. That's not going to get done this month. All in good time.

One important task on Myrt's list was to, "Create an introduction..." She goes on to say, "Your surname binder and surname digital file folder on your computer each need an introduction to quickly orient those who find your work later." This is so important if we want our family to be able to use our work! I'm working on this task this week.

We need a file naming scheme for our digital files. Mine goes something like this:

Surname_FirstName_YearofDocument_ShortDescription

My hope is that this will allow the files for an individual to naturally sort in chronological order. It works pretty well...unless there are variations in the way someone spelled their name. I always name the file using the name the way it was spelled in the document.

Just for fun, I've started putting photos on the front of my binders. Here's the cover I created for the Roos binder:

URL for this post: http://turning-of-generations.blogspot.com/2016/01/finally-get-organized-january-report.html

 © 2016, copyright Michelle Goodrum

Roots Tech - Three Things I Learned on Saturday

The only session I attended in person on Saturday was the Advanced Metadata Workshop given by Randy Whited.

For anyone not familiar with the concept of metadata, Randy had a great example. Metadata is simply data about data. So for a book (data) the title page is metadata. It's data about what's in the book. We usually think in terms of metadata and digital files which is what Randy's session primarily covered. Three things I learned:

1. XnView is freeware that allows you to view, edit, batch process, batch rename and manage metadata (IPTC). I've had this program for eons but had forgotten how much I like it. Randy showed us how to resize the "canvas" your image is on and add text, such as a citation. XnView allows you to do this in batches. Perfect for adding citations to those land files I obtained at NARA in January.
2. ExifToolGUI is another freeware that allows batch processing of your files. I was intrigued because you can see and work with the various standards for digital metadata (EXIF, IPTC and XMP).
3. Windows Explorer allows you to add comments to the comments field and then view later on. It's good for people who are tabular in their thinking. I've been staring at that comments field for years and never gave much thought to doing anything with it.

One last tip. If you download an image from FamilySearch.org, copy their citation into the comments field in properties in your image file. It may not be in the format that you want but at least you have the citation information.

URL for this post: http://turning-of-generations.blogspot.com/2014/02/roots-tech-three-things-i-learned-on.html

© 2014, copyright Michelle Goodrum

21COFH - Get Organized for the Holidays

Hoping you all had a wonderful Thanksgiving and are gearing up for the holiday season.  I suspect there won't be much family history organizing going on for the next month or so (at least not around here). So we are going to take a break for the month of December.

I'll be letting you all know what the 21st Century Organized Family Historian series has in store for 2013 in the next few weeks.

Happy Holidays.


© 2012, copyright Michelle Goodrum

21COFH - Happy Thanksgiving - Week

Happy Thanksgiving from the 21st Century Organized Family Historian. The only organizing going on around here is for the big feast on Thursday. Enjoy yours!

© 2012, copyright Michelle Goodrum

21COFH - Letter Scanning Work Flow

This week we are wrapping up our project to digitize some of our family papers. I am working with some of Dad's letters from hid early years.

After tinkering around with all of the steps necessary to scan Dad's letters, I've finally settled in. Here are the steps I am taking.

Note:

• Dad's letters are already in individual folders so I am working with one folder at a time.

1.  Using the item level inventory I set up in OneNote, I came up with a file name for each file. Doing this up front helped make sure I was consistent in naming files. I also decided to give each folder a number and included this on the inventory form. It will help with locating the physical letters at a later date.

2.  Next I wrote the folder ID on each of the folders.

3.  Scan the contents of one folder at a time. (Do steps 4-6 before scanning the next folder.)

At this point I decided to change my work flow for the remaining steps. First I'll describe what I was doing initially. Then I'll tell you how I changed it to incorporate Lightroom.

4. Since the files are automatically named (scan0001, etc.), I renamed each file using the filenames from step 1. The filenames are already in OneNote so this step is a simple copy and paste.

5. Using Photoshop Elements, I added identifying metadata to each file, such as my contact info, so anyone who gets a copy of any of these files in the future will know where it came from.

6. Also using Photoshop Elements, I added some tags. I decided to go with Dad's name, and Correspondence or Letters for all of the files. Then depending on the letter, I might add Military or Navy, and if the letter was from a family member I included that person's name. For this step you need to think about how your brain retrieves information and add tags accordingly. Everyone is different. What's important is that you can search using a tag and locate the files you want.

7. When all of the file folders have been scanned, they will go back into their designated spot in Dad's box of papers.

Here's what I changed using Lightroom (steps 4-6):

Note: I have a Lightroom catalog just for family history.

4. Once in Lightroom, locate the files from the folder I just scanned and prepare to import (add) that group of files to the catalog.

• I set up what is called a Metadata Preset with my contact information and the Tags that will be applied to every single letter. So this will be automatically done on import.
• Input the filename for this group of files.
• After importing, if there were any additional tags I wanted to apply to just that letter, I did so.

That's it. I just keep doing those steps over and over. Not the most exciting stuff but I'm confident it will prove worthwhile in the future.

Hopefully this helps. If you have questions or comments, let us know in the comments section. Good luck this week.

URL for this post: http://turning-of-generations.blogspot.com/2012/11/21cofh-letter-scanning-work-flow.html

© 2012, copyright Michelle Goodrum

21COFH - Letter Scanning Wrap-up - Week 46

Last week took an unexpected turn for the crazy - in a good sort of way. So I didn't quite finish scanning Dad's letters. This week we will wrap it all up. I'll post my work flow tomorrow after I work out a couple of "bugs" and get the remaining letters scanned.

Scan away my friends!

© 2012, copyright Michelle Goodrum

21COFH - Scanning Letters - Week 45

This is the last week of our multi-week project working with family papers. Last week we did an item level inventory. This week it's time to digitize the documents.

I'm still working with Dad's correspondence from his childhood and early adult years.

Before beginning, here are some factors to consider. My comments are in italics.

• IF you are using a flatbed scanner, make sure the glass is clean.
• Decide if you will be scanning envelopes. I will be.
• Will you be scanning both sides of each page regardless of whether there is anything on it or not?
• Yes, that way I know for sure what was or wasn't on the backside of each paper.
• What file format(s) will you use? JPG, TIFF, PDF? Other?
• Since Dad's letters are important documents, I will scan them using TIFF format. It's a "loss-less" format and widely accepted so it should be readable by future programs. I may also convert them to pdf.
• What dpi (resolution) will you use?
• Normally I like to use 600 dpi but for letters, 300 dpi will be fine.
• Decide on your file naming scheme.
• Since these files will reside together in a folder on my computer, and I would like them to sort by date, the file name will be something like this:
• yyyy-mm-dd_LastName_FirstName_to_Name_letter.
• The date will be the date of the letter or the date of the postmark.
• If the document has multiple pages, p01, p02, etc. will be appended to the file name.
• Decide where on your hard drive the files will reside and what the folder structure will be.
• I set up a folder called Family Archive. Each folder inside will represent a box of documents. The next folder level will represent Dad's Correspondence. All of the scanned letters will go in there.
• Is there any labeling of your physical folders that still needs to be done?
• I haven't done this and am still debating on the format. I'll get back to you on this!
• Decide what metadata, if any, you are going to include.
• When I import into the Lightroom Cagalog, I will add tags such as Dad's name and his parents names, where appropriate. For the letters relating to his Navy Days the tags and "Military" or "Navy"  can be added.
• Ideally I would like to include a source citation in the Description field but in reality that might be a bit ambitious right now. The information needed to do this has been documented through this entire process in my OneNote "Project Notebook." It won't be a problem to go back and create them on an as needed basis.

Several days ago, Moultrie Creek Gazette posted, A Letter Archive Option, where she discussed using Keynote in digitizing a series of old letters. Check it out!

Time to start scanning! Questions? Comments? You know what to do!


URL for this post: http://turning-of-generations.blogspot.com/2012/11/21cofh-scanning-letters-week-45.html

© 2012, copyright Michelle Goodrum

21COFH - Item Level Inventory - Week 44

This week we are taking the organization of our family papers down to the item or folder level. This is something you may not want to do with all of your papers, especially if you have a lot. But for the ones you plan on working with in the future, this will come in handy and save you time looking.

So you are still working with the portion of your family papers from last week.

Some tips to keep in mind while preparing your item by item inventory:

• Preserve the original order of the documents.
• Using a spreadsheet or table format will allow you to re-sort your data later on. Although paper is perfectly fine too if that's what works best for you.
• When preparing your inventory, think in terms of the information you might want to know when deciding which files to pull in the future.

Here's a sample of the inventory I did with Dad's correspondence.

By the way, I haven't labeled the folders yet. I am toying with labeling each folder with the Box Number/Name, Subject Category (Correspondence in this case) and then use a numerical folder number. An index sheet would be kept in the box.

Good luck! Let us know of any questions or comments in the comments section or in a post of your own. If you do your own post, let us know in the comments below. We all get great ideas from each other.

URL for this post: http://turning-of-generations.blogspot.com/2012/10/21cofh-item-level-inventory-week-44.html

© 2012, copyright Michelle Goodrum

Family Papers Next Step...Continued - 21COFH

Last week, we went a little deeper into a select portion of family papers. I was working with Dad's correspondence from his childhood and early adult years. Due to a busy week, I didn't include comments for Step 4:

As you are doing these steps, it's a good idea to look at the documents to get an idea of what they are all about. The detail you wish to get into for these steps is totally up to you.

You may wish to do an item by item inventory and description. Or a more general inventory and description may suit you just fine. It depends on what you want to do with your collection long term.

This week I went with the general inventory and description. Since I will wish to work with these letters more in-depth in the future, next week I will do an item by item inventory and description. What we are doing is developing "finding aids" to help us locate things more easily in the future.

Here's the short blurb I wrote in OneNote:

Correspondence:

These letters are from Dad's childhood and early adult years. The letters are mostly to and from friends and family with a few items regarding Naval service. The years covered are 1933 through the early 1950s.

So, some of Dad's correspondence started out looking like this:

And ended up looking like this:

Next up is the item by item description.

URL for this post: http://turning-of-generations.blogspot.com/2012/10/family-papers-next-stepcontinued-21cofh.html

© 2012, copyright Michelle Goodrum

21COFH - Family Papers Next Step - Week 43

Last week we worked up an overall arrangement for a collection of family papers (or a portion in my case since it's such a large collection). This week we are going to go a level deeper.

1.  Select a portion of your family papers.

Since I have several boxes, I decided to select Dad's correspondence from his early years through young adulthood. 

When these papers originally came into my possession, I moved them from the dusty, musty boxes they had spent several decades in to the current boxes. The papers were placed in file folders (non-archival) and loosely labeled as follows. At the time, I kept things together and just moved them from the old boxes to the new:

• Correspondence 1933
• Correspondence 1937-38
• Letter to Mom 1938
• Letter to Dad 1946
• Correspondence family
• Navy correspondence
• Navy correspondence-personal
• Correspondence 1945
• Correspondence 1946
• Letter home from Illinois 1946
• Correspondence 1948
• Correspondence received 1940s-1950s

2.  Go through each item, unfold and lay flat. Also remove any staples or rubber bands. Remove items from envelopes, if applicable. Place each item, letter or group of papers in it's own folder, if possible. You will have to use your own judgement on this step as to what makes sense for your situation and goals.

Since I'm working through Dad's correspondence, I placed each letter and envelope in it's own folder. The folders I used are thin, archival folders. Several of these can be placed inside a manilla folder.
 

Here's an example of the folders. For now I use sticky notes for labeling purposes until I'm ready to finalize. 

NOTE: If you're working with letters and don't wish to save the envelope, it would be a good idea to make note on the letter, of the following, in pencil. Use square brackets like this[ ] to denote your comments.

• Names and addresses.
• Postmark date and place.
• Any other notations from the envelope you think might be important.

4. As you are doing these steps, it's a good idea to look at the documents to get an idea of what they are all about. The detail you wish to get into for these steps is totally up to you.

You may wish to do an item by item inventory and description. Or a more general inventory and description may suit you just fine. It depends on what you want to do with your collection long term.

 Since we have had a really busy weekend, I'm going to write up my comments for this step in a separate post in the next day or two. Stay tuned...

Next week we digitize.

URL for this post: http://turning-of-generations.blogspot.com/2012/10/21cofh-week-43.html

© 2012, copyright Michelle Goodrum

21COFH - Family Papers Organization - Week 42

This week we are going to delve into family papers a little deeper. In week 40 we took an inventory. You can read what I did using OneNote. Last week we did a little filing to clean things up a bit. So this week, it's time to select a portion of the collection to work with in more depth.

My responses to this project are included in this post in italics.

1. Using your inventory, select a portion of your collection to organize in more detail.

I selected the four boxes of Dad's papers.
 

2. If you haven't already, take a look at this group of papers, are there certain documents that are grouped together or should be? We need to be careful at this step not to disturb items that should be left together or that we are unsure of. More papers or information may turn up to help us organize those documents later on. For this step make notes.

Since I'm pretty familiar with Dad's life, organizing has been fairly easy. Dad's early years are what I need to be careful of. 

After looking through the files I had previously set up when Dad's papers came to me, I could see there were the following broad groupings:

• Auto
• Business
• Childhood
• Community, Civic
• College
• Correspondence
• Financial
• Health
• Military
• Real Estate
• School
• Travel
• Yearbooks
• Young Adult Years

The categories in bold are the ones I need to be careful of since I'm not as familiar with those portions of Dad's life and there isn't anyone around to ask. Correspondence is in bold only because most of Dad's correspondence is from the teen and early adult years.
 

3. Arrange the papers.

As I did this, I made notes on the category list from above as to which box(es) each category was placed in.
 

4. Label the box(es).

Each of the four boxes was labeled with Dad's name, his year of birth and death, and the box number.
 

5. Write up a short description of this collection or series of papers for your project notebook.

Mine included:

• A very short biography of 3 or 4 sentences.
• How it came into my possession.
• The size (4 boxes) and where they are stored.
• List of the categories from above and which box(es) each category is located in.

This project took about two hours to complete.

Next week we will go into more detail with one of the categories.

Remember to select something you can complete this week. It can be one box or even one file folder.

Tell us about your experience either in the comments or a post of your own (be sure to leave the url in the comments).

 

Good luck!

URL for this post: http://turning-of-generations.blogspot.com/2012/10/21cofh-week-42.html

© 2012, copyright Michelle Goodrum

21COFH - The Dreaded F Word - Week 41

Filing. That's what we're doing this week. If you're like me your probably thinking, "Ick." It's one of those necessary evils.

There's any number of ways you can approach this week's project. Here are some suggestions:

1. Tell yourself right now that skipping this week is not an option. Even if you only spend 5 or 10 minutes on it, that is still progress.
2. Select one or more boxes, bags or other containers of family papers and move them to a more appropriate storage situation. This can be in archival material or just something that is better than the old dusty, musty boxes they are in right now. If you do this, please pay attention and try to keep things in their original order for now.
3. Take that box or bag of papers that you know all about: who they belonged to, what they were for, when they were created. Integrate them into your currently well organized filing system. Don't have one yet? Now is a great time to start!
4. How about that pile of papers from a previous research trip you never got around to putting away? This week is a great time to start.

Remember to update your project notebook with your accomplishments.

Questions? Comments?

Good luck!

URL for this post: http://turning-of-generations.blogspot.com/2012/10/21cofh-dreaded-f-word-week-41.html

© 2012, copyright Michelle Goodrum

Family Papers Inventory - 21COFH

This was a project I needed to complete as much has been added to the family papers collection since I last took inventory. Boxes have been shuffled. More is being added all the time.

Using the photo inventory I set up in OneNote back in February, I made a few minor modifications to include documents.

Under the Inventories tab, I added my inventory of documents to my Inventory Form.

Under the Overview tab, I started a new page called Summary of Family Papers and wrote a short description similar to the one I did for the photo collections previously.

There you have it, easy-peezy. We now have expanded the usefulness of our "Project Notebook."

This post was written in response to Family Papers - Week 40.

URL for this post: http://turning-of-generations.blogspot.com/2012/10/family-papers-inventory-21cofh.html

© 2012, copyright Michelle Goodrum

21COFH - Family Papers - Week 40

Previously we have worked extensively with our family photos. This week we are going to begin looking at family papers. Remember the Project Notebook we set up way back in week 14? We will be adding to it.

This week we will take inventory of our family papers. Note: you may have done this in the week 5 project where we inventoried our photographs. If you did, then this week will be an easy one! At any rate the instructions are very similar to the photo inventory.

The level of detail for this activity should depend upon the time you have available this week and the extent of your physical collection of papers. It’s better to have a very general, short inventory than none at all!

Suggested steps to follow:

1. Move in an organized, methodical fashion. One suggestion is to go room by room, moving clockwise around the room.

2. Note each box, album (or groups of), pile or other unit of storage. You could describe the box (red shoe box) or you could number your boxes.

3. When looking at the contents, make note of:

a.    General provenance – who’s papers were they, how did they come to be in your possession? If there is any additional background, this is a good time to note it.

b.    Surname(s) included in the box.

c.    General time frame and subject matter.

d.    Format, size ranges and quantity. This will be helpful if you need to order archival storage supplies.

e.     Note concerns and items needing attention, rescue, or other triage such as folded brittle papers.

f.     Other items such as address books, heirloom items, etc. Often when someone’s home gets packed up, different types of objects get tossed together in the same box.

g.     Anything else you consider important.

4. If you have a lot of papers, you might want to move boxes to your work area as you inventory and then return them to their original location.

5. Please remember, if you remove items from boxes, it’s important to keep things in their original order.

After completing the inventory, you will be more familiar with your collection. Write a paragraph generally describing the collection and keep it with the inventory. Consider including:

· When and who you received the papers from.

· If there were previous owners or other history, mention it.

· Where the collection is located now.

· Size of the collection.

· Mini collections within your overall collection.

 

Tell us about your inventory experience, the format you used and, if you want, share your paragraph. You can do so either in the comments or a post of your own (be sure to leave the url in the comments).

Good luck and remember to keep this project to what you can complete this week.
URL for this post: http://turning-of-generations.blogspot.com/2012/10/21cofh-family-papers-week-40.html

© 2012, copyright Michelle Goodrum

I've Got E-mail! Lots of It! 21COFH Week 39

So much for getting my e-mail system written up and posted "tomorrow"! This has been a challenging week to say the least. Without further delay here are my e-mail comments.

I have opted to keep genealogy related emails both in gmail and on my computer. Here's the workflow:

• After reading an incoming e-mail, I save it (or the entire thread, if we have been corresponding back and forth).  Pdf is the format I have settled on. That way if any files have been attached, the filename and often a thumbnail of the image are included. Since pdf is an accepted standard today, it should be around for years to come. I understand Rich Text Format (rtf) is another good format to save in.

• Next, I add tags to the metadata which might include surnames, localities and general topics (such as military, land, etc) as appropriate. I can use the description field to include additional information, including a citation, if appropriate.

• Where? There are a couple options here. One is to save under the surname of the individual I'm corresponding with. Another option is the surname of the subject family we are discussing. Since I have a correspondence folder under each surname, that's the folder it goes in.

• What about attachments? I've decided to go into the metadata, create a source citation, provenance or whatever is appropriate and use tags. Then the attachment is filed just as any other document or photo would be: in a surname or locality folder. I still have a way of tying the attachment and the e-mail together because of the citation included in the attachment and the pdf automatically includes the attachment info.

• Once I'm done processing the e-mail (it sounds complicated but it really only takes minutes) and making any notes or inputting to my genealogy software, I will add tags/labels to the e-mail and file it in the appropriate surname, locality or subject folder in gmail.

Confession time. I get really far behind with this and make a point of plugging away as I am able. When I do, I am rewarded because I can easily find what I'm looking for. Motivation to try and stay caught up!

Oh yeah, one more thing. Sometimes I print this stuff out and file it. There's times when an item is so important it just needs to be on paper too!

How about you? How do you handle your genealogy related e-mail?

URL for this post: http://turning-of-generations.blogspot.com/2012/09/ive-got-e-mail-lots-of-it-21cofh-week-39.html

Photo credit: Nieve44/La Luz

 © 2012, copyright Michelle Goodrum

21COFH - E-mail! Week 39

This week we are going to spend some time organizing our e-mail. Don't worry about getting to "Inbox Zero." Although it's nice to dream about, some of us have a ways to go before we get to that point. This week just try to make some progress and if you haven't already, set up a system or work flow.

Here are some questions to ask yourself:

1. Do you want your family history related e-mails to reside in the "cloud," on your computer, or both?
2. If they are to live on your computer, what format will they take? PDF? TXT? Or another format?
3. How will they be organized?
4. For e-mails living in your e-mail program (gmail, yahoo, etc.), how are you going to organizing them. Or will you?
5. What about attachments? How will you handle those?
6. Is this a very important e-mail? Perhaps it needs to reside in several places. Use the LOCKSS principle where appropriate. (LOCKSS = Lots Of Copies Keeps Stuff Safe)

Don't forget you may need to analyze some of the information in those e-mails and enter that in your genealogy data base.

Remember you don't need to get all of your email cleaned up this week. Just get a system going, if you haven't already, and make some progress.

Questions? Comments? Blog posts of your own? You know what to do!

Now go out and conquer. Any progress is good progress.

Check back tomorrow for my approach.


URL for this post: http://turning-of-generations.blogspot.com/2012/09/21cofh-e-mail-week-39.html

© 2012, copyright Michelle Goodrum

21COFH - Educational Materials - Week 38

Last week our project was to work with digital educational materials. This week, we tackle the paper. If you have been involved with family history and genealogy for a while, I'm betting you have a ton of handouts, syllabi, workbooks and notes from classes, meetings and conferences. It will be much easier to refer to them if they have been digitized and are searchable.

The steps are similar to last week with a couple of additions:

1. Utilize your organizational scheme.
2. Consider the use of metadata.
3. Decide what to digitize (and what to even keep at all for that matter).
4. Scan away.

I have several mini projects to choose from and I'll bet you do to. Here's what I have:

1. Several three ring binders of handouts and notes from society meetings and seminars. All nicely organized by topic and/or location. These go back to the 1990s when I first started seriously researching.
2. More recent notes and handouts that somehow landed in a pile instead of the file.
3. National Institute of Genealogical Studies (NIGS) courses. Four of those 3 inch binders full of material. Why I didn't download the materials when I had the chance, I'll never know. But I could make a serious hole on a shelf by digitizing these.
4. National conference and Family History Expo syllabi. These suckers are big and would also clear up some serious shelf space if they were digitized.

Tip: Evernote is perfect for a project like this. The free account will scan your image files and make both printed and handwritten text searchable. The premium account will also do this for PDFs.

What materials can you digitize and clean out this week? Let us know in the comments or a post of your own and leave the URL in the comments. I'll have the results of my project up tomorrow.


URL for this post: http://turning-of-generations.blogspot.com/2012/09/21cofh-educational-materials-week-38.html

© 2012, copyright Michelle Goodrum

Disclaimer: I am an Evernote Premium user. I pay the annual fee with my own hard earned money.

21COFH- Organizing Scheme for Presentations

Things are out of control on my computer when it comes to all of the handouts and notes from conferences, society meetings, and webinars. Laying out how to organize all of these files on my hard drive is critical if I am ever going to be able to refer to them again. This week I'll show you how the file folders and file names are set up. Warning: It's a work in progress!

In the folder hierarchy on my hard drive, in Dropbox, is a folder called Education. Within that folder are subfolders for the various organizations whose presentations and webinars I have attended, such as National Genealogical Society, Family History Society of Arizona, etc. This is where I put both the handouts or syllabi and my own notes.

The file naming convention is as follows:

• LastName_FirstName_YYYY-MM_Title

The title is usually abbreviated and I add "notes" or "handout" or "syllabus" to the end of the file name.

This way all lectures by Tom Jones are grouped together and sorted by date. If I search my computer for "Tom Jones" all of his lectures will appear no matter whether they are stored in an NGS, SLIG, FGS or some other folder.

It occurs to me that tags could be added to the files to get them to appear in certain searches. For example, lectures on the Civil War would come up if given that tag. I don't plan on going back and tagging all of my files but there might be times when doing this could be extremely helpful. So I'll do it on an "as needed" basis.

As for podcasts and conference recordings, since those files are huge, for now I keep them in the defaul folder "Music" that Windows 7 has. Probably a little weird but the file size dictates not putting them in Dropbox.

I'm very interested in how my genea friends have set up their organizing system for these types of files. Please, leave a comment or a url to your own post! This inquiring mind wants to know. Seriously!

This post is in response to Educational Materials - Week 37.

URL for this post: http://turning-of-generations.blogspot.com/2012/09/21cofh-organizing-scheme-for.html

© 2012, copyright Michelle Goodrum

21COFH - Educational Materials - Week 37

Have you accumulated a ton of educational materials from society meetings, seminars, workshops, and conferences? Would you like to clear up some shelf floor space? We are going to take a couple of weeks to do just that by digitizing these items.

These days, educational material can come in more than paper form. You might find yourself with:

• Syllabi on CD or flash drive
• Your own lecture notes in Word or some other format
• Audio recordings
• Podcasts
• Webinars

Not only are we being overrun with paper but also digital content.

This week take some time to get your materials that are already in digital form organized by taking the following steps:

1. If you haven't already done so, decide on an organizational scheme. Educational materials will probably be organized differently than the rest of your genealogical files.
2. Remember to consider metadata, like we discussed last week. It will make it easier to locate files on your hard drive.
3. Get your educational files into your organizational system and add metadata.

Check back tomorrow to see how I have organized my digital educational materials.

Next week we will tackle the paper.

You can read about my project at Organizing Scheme for Presentations.

URL for this post: http://turning-of-generations.blogspot.com/2012/09/21cofh-educational-materials-week-37.html

© 2012, copyright Michelle Goodrum

21COFH - Metadata

Metadata (data about data) is important if we are digitizing our photographs, family papers, and documents. I'm learning every week about this topic. Here's the framework I'm using right now.

Photographs

I'm in the process of switching over to Adobe Lightroom but right now I use Adobe Photoshop Elements. Whether it's a picture or an old family photo, and regardless of the file format (almost always either jpg or tiff), I use the following fields to add important information about the digital files I have.

• First, I use templates to automatically fill in my name as the Author, the Copyright Notice and contact information as appropriate.
• Second, I use the Description field in a number of ways:
• Write a caption.
• Reproduce what was already written on the back of a photograph.
• Create a citation.
•   Assigning Keywords (or tags) helps to find a photograph or group of pictures later on.

Family Papers & Documents Obtained Through Research
As documents are digitized, I add metadata as described above, paying particular attention to creating a citation.

If you are saving these types of documents as pdf files you can add the same types of metadata as well. I'm using Adobe Acrobat Pro X. I'm not sure which versions do or do not allow for this.

I also like to annote the front of the document with a citation, if it can be done in an "out of the way" place on the document.

Adobe Lightroom
I've been playing with Lightroom on and off this summer in order to learn the program and decide what the workflow should be. An advantage of this program is the ability to handle files in batches, eliminating the sometimes painful process of doing the same thing over and over with many files. Also, the ability to add keywords or tags makes it easier to locate files later.

Denise Levenick at The Family Curator has a great post today called, "Using Adobe Lightroom to Manage Genealogy Images." I hope she writes more in the near future!


© 2012, copyright Michelle Goodrum