I published the following post in 2008. More than five years later I thought it worthwhile to repost it with a few comments in GREEN of course
I am trying to cut down on paper use in everyday life. I store all of my documents and photos on a hard drive and back them up to DVD. I never print emails and don't even have a printer installed on my little Eee PC. My calendar and contacts are online and synched between a couple of devices. Gone are the DVDs - I now backup to two external Drives.
But what of my Genealogy hobby? I have a bookshelf full of folders with bits of paper I have collected over the years and I am wondering how much of this stuff is essential. I must go through the folders and prune down the contents. I will keep primary documents and copies of certificates but will scan anything else I need to keep. My intentions are good but I am still trying to tame the paper monster. Now I always save new documents in soft copy and only keep hard copies of those certificates etc. I still have to go through the folders and have a scanning blitz. I now have a family of scanners that I use for different types of document.
In the future: I guess that's now.
* When visiting repositories I will eschew the photocopiers and microfilm printers. I will use a USB flash drive to save data where possible on reader/printers, I will use the digital camera I have in my handbag to take digital images (on a high resolution) of book and journal pages and microfilm printer screens. And if they let me I use my Flip-Pal scanner.
* I will resist printing out reports that others send me. I do find it hard to transcribe details and continually change windows when transcribing details from databases on one computer. I now set up two laptops and use one for viewing/browsing and one for data entry. I get an A+ here but I usually now use one laptop with my large monitor attached.
* I won't print off hard copy backups of genealogy reports. I will save these to an offsite location. An easy way to do this is to attach documents to an email and send them to a web-based email account like Gmail. Another A+ here but I just save the docs to the two hard drives. I can't afford the subscription to save everything to a cloud service.
Maybe I'll even save a tree. I'm interested in tips from Greenie Genies. I'm not perfect but feel that I am well on the way to earning my stripes as a Greenie Genie.
How are you faring?
I am trying to cut down on paper use in everyday life. I store all of my documents and photos on a hard drive and back them up to DVD. I never print emails and don't even have a printer installed on my little Eee PC. My calendar and contacts are online and synched between a couple of devices. Gone are the DVDs - I now backup to two external Drives.
But what of my Genealogy hobby? I have a bookshelf full of folders with bits of paper I have collected over the years and I am wondering how much of this stuff is essential. I must go through the folders and prune down the contents. I will keep primary documents and copies of certificates but will scan anything else I need to keep. My intentions are good but I am still trying to tame the paper monster. Now I always save new documents in soft copy and only keep hard copies of those certificates etc. I still have to go through the folders and have a scanning blitz. I now have a family of scanners that I use for different types of document.
In the future: I guess that's now.
* When visiting repositories I will eschew the photocopiers and microfilm printers. I will use a USB flash drive to save data where possible on reader/printers, I will use the digital camera I have in my handbag to take digital images (on a high resolution) of book and journal pages and microfilm printer screens. And if they let me I use my Flip-Pal scanner.
* I will resist printing out reports that others send me. I do find it hard to transcribe details and continually change windows when transcribing details from databases on one computer. I now set up two laptops and use one for viewing/browsing and one for data entry. I get an A+ here but I usually now use one laptop with my large monitor attached.
* I won't print off hard copy backups of genealogy reports. I will save these to an offsite location. An easy way to do this is to attach documents to an email and send them to a web-based email account like Gmail. Another A+ here but I just save the docs to the two hard drives. I can't afford the subscription to save everything to a cloud service.
Maybe I'll even save a tree. I'm interested in tips from Greenie Genies. I'm not perfect but feel that I am well on the way to earning my stripes as a Greenie Genie.
How are you faring?
