Review and Organize

Photo by JF Martin on Unsplash

If you’ve been reading my BLOGS, you’re probably tired of hearing my reminders to review your research but here we are again. <smile> I was reminded myself when I went looking for a particular document. After looking at online folders as well as three binders full of valuable information, I realized that I need to practice what I preach. Let’s look.

If you’re like me, you may have started your family history journey before computers were widely used by individuals. In fairness I began my research in high school! The challenge comes with having both a paper and a digital system. Here are some thoughts to help improve your access to key material.

1. We’ve all heard digitize, digitize, and digitize. It is great to have both paper and digital copies of important papers. When you are digitizing, remember to do the following:
   1. If you’re doing mass digitization, you need to plan on devoting time to labeling those digitized documents. If you do not, you’ll end up with folders of valuable research that is not easily found with search. It isn’t effective to scroll through hundreds of items.
   2. To help with organizing, focus on one family branch at a time.
   3. Be thoughtful with your digital folders. Everyone has their own preferred method. My preference is to have the main Family Name then subdivided by the Family Name and Location. For example. Main Family Name “Smith” then subcategories “Smith- Germany;” Smith- Minnesota, and so on. Within those categories, I like to include a folder for the parents and then each of their adult children. This is especially helpful if I have a lot of photos and documents related to the extended family.
   4. Be kind to yourself. This is a process. If you’ve taken years to accumulate all of this wonderful family history, it will take some time to get it organized the way that you would like it.
2. Review the information that you have.
   1. Review your data for duplicates. I tend to hold on to every scrap of genealogy paper that I’ve acquired over the years. However, that is not feasible. It is ok to have a paper copy and a digital copy of important papers. However, you probably don’t need to have three paper copies of your family tree when you can easily access it from your program or print out a copy when you do need it.
   2. Think about the long term. I’ve been thinking more about how I can make this information have relevance once I am gone. Of course, writing a family story is one way to capture key data to share with others. I also think by having your data organized, it helps future generations understand what it is about. It wouldn’t hurt to include a few notes to help others understand why they don’t want to chuck this entire folder or box of pictures.
3. Ensure that you have used the research.
   1. So often we excitedly find new family history information online. With access to online databases, this task has become easier and our volume of documents grows faster than we can manage. All those findings are useless if we don’t take the time to organize and to incorporate this information into our family history and family stories.
   2. Review the sources that you used to ensure that your data is accurate and update it if you’ve learned something new.

I hope I’ve given you some ideas and inspiration to do your own digitizing and organizing. I plan to continue on my journey to make my research organized and accessible. Hope you do the same. Happy organizing!