Another Episode of the Fling

One of the more popular posts on my blog to this day is "Fling it in the Folder" a description methods. As I wrote this post 8 years ago I thought it was time for an update. I still use the same system but have tweaked it a bit and changed some of the software I use.

I am reposting my post from 2011 with alterations and comments in Green.

In a couple of previous posts I have alluded to my digital filing system and, in a comment on one of those posts, Sharon Brennan asked me "Can you describe your filing system??

I have hesitated in doing so because my system is neither scientific or complex. It is a simple system that works for me. Having trained in Librarianship many years ago I am in the habit of putting things in alphabetical order so this is the simple basis of my system. With digital systems I prefer a flat structure to one that is deeply hierarchical requiring lots of drilling down to access information.

I have already spoken of my scanning station (I now have a Scansnap scanner on my desk connected to my computer via USB) and my commitment to scanning all the bits of paper I have related to my genealogy obsession. I have also talked about what I do with conference papers.

My system is to "Fling it in the folder". I have a series of folders set up on my hard drive, each file I have, irrespective of format, goes into the appropriate folder or sub-folder. All my image files are additionally tagged with Picasa ACDSee software.

I do not worry about linking Places in that folder to People in that folder or creating other similar relationships between files (but I guess I could hyperlink them if I felt the need at a later date) as my genealogy software manages that for me. 

The folders are: I have added a few extra folders.

Most of the labels are self explanatory but some need clarification.

Correspondence contains genealogy letters of a general nature. Those about a specific surname or person are filed in the Names folder.

Curry All  stores files about the Curry surname in Australia ready for when I have the time or inclination to conduct a one-name study. Renamed CurryAus for my Surname Study.

Geniaus Backup  is a backup of my family site files ie templates and design. I don't need to back up the data as the backup is my TMG database and its backups.

Geniaus Talks is the home of my talks and presentations and articles I write for journals, newsletters etc.

Names is the biggest folder. It has some sorting folders that are prefixed with 00 and then a folder for each surname in my database.

Within each name folder is a series of documents and folders. Each file name is in the format:
Lastname, Firstname DoB File description.

Once I have more than three or four files for an individual he or she gets a folder labelled with: Lastname, Firstname DoB and Date of Death.

Odds & Sods is just that. The place where I fling  graphics, cartoons and other ephemera.

Our  Diary is peculiar to me. It contains an Excel spreadsheet that is my digital diary; the folder also contains other documents such as invitations, programs, tickets that are hyperlinked from the corresponding entry in the diary.

This diary from the day of my parent's marriage has been constructed over the years from documents, printed diaries, old calendars, receipts, certificates, recollections, newspaper clippings and by uing photographs as prompts. I  presently use Outlook for my diary and periodically export this into the Our Diary spreadsheet.

The Headings for this spreadsheet are: Day, Date, Time, Details, Source 1, Source 2, Source 3.

Places is similar to names but contains folders with maps and information about the places of my ancestors. These include, Towns, Houses and Churches.

Presentations has been explained in a previous blog post,Where do you put them? Conference Papers

Research Log and Plans does not house my master research log(that is a Google Docs spreadsheet) Now integrated in my Family Historian software but the smaller logs I create when I am going to visit a particular repository, resource or place eg The National Archives, The Family History Library, or The National Library of Australia.

TMG and TNG are where one finds files relating to my two genealogy software programs. These folders do not have family data. I no longer use TMG so have created a folder for Family Historian my current software of choice.

I keep and tag all of my bookmarks in Delicious Evernote and use Picasa ACDSee software. 
to tag and organise my photographs. Librarything is my program of choice for organising my books.

Perusing this list I am reminded of one other folder - Genealogy - Scans to sort. This is where my scans live until I file them. For consistency I think it will be renamed.

Phew! That was a post and a half - hope it answers your question, Sharon.

Trove Tuesday - Filing

I'm feeling rather virtuous as I spent the best part of yesterday filing - a task that I usually avoid like the plague.

Trove offers some filing related advice..

1914 'FILING NEGATIVES.', Punch (Melbourne, Vic. : 1900 - 1918; 1925), 26 November, p. 3. , viewed 30 Jan 2017, http://nla.gov.au/nla.news-article121087659

1949 'FILING CABINET', The Blackwood Times (Bunbury, WA : 1905 - 1920; 1945 - 1954), 22 July, p. 14. , viewed 30 Jan 2017, http://nla.gov.au/nla.news-article210699436

1942 'FILING CABINET', The World's News (Sydney, NSW : 1901 - 1955), 1 August, p. 24. , viewed 30 Jan 2017, http://nla.gov.au/nla.news-article139908893

The original of this next article is too difficult to read so I'll share a transcription.

SPECIAL FILING EDITION.

A limited edition of the "Sydney Morn-

ing Herald" on rag-made paper is pub-

lished daily.

This edition Is intended especially for

libraries, both public and Institutional, that

wish to have files on paper of permanence.

Copies of the edition are available to the

general public

Orders for the filing edition should reach

us as early as possible. Rates will be sup-

plied on application.

JOHN FAIRFAX & SONS, LTD.

1928 'SPECIAL FILING EDITION.', The Sydney Morning Herald (NSW : 1842 - 1954), 18 October, p. 10. , viewed 30 Jan 2017, http://nla.gov.au/nla.news-article16502667

1949 'HENRY', The Argus (Melbourne, Vic. : 1848 - 1957), 23 July, p. 14. (The Argus Week-End Magazine), viewed 30 Jan 2017, http://nla.gov.au/nla.news-article22766573

Rough around the Edges

My GeniAus' Hangouts on Air are, like me, a bit rough around the edges.

Each time I start a Hangout I seem to have some sort of technology glitch. In this week's Hangout the invitations I sent out for people to join the panel did not work so with three minutes to go before the Hangout was due to start I cancelled it and scheduled another which allowed some panelists to join me. Apologies to those who couldn't join, time was of the essence and I just had to get on with the show.

During the Hangouts sometimes there is an echo because someone (I'm guilty here) doesn't mute themselves while others are speaking, sometimes panelists forget to unmte themselves and  are just talking heads when responding to questions so I have to remind them to unmute themselves. Sharing computer screens creates issues as we wait for them to appear, sometimes my screen freezes and conversation halts so we have periods of silence. I do get stressed at these times but  I don't worry because it is all part of a learning experience.

What is gratifying is that those who are viewing have become quite competent at contributing to the conversation by comments during the live sessions. To do this you must be a member of the GeniAus Community on Google+. I do it this way so that we have a private forum in which to converse, only those whom I approve for membership of the community make and view comments but anyone can watch the sessons via my Youtube Channel.

What the panelists and I are doing is having an enlightening conversation on a genealogy topic and a practical learning session (on mastering the Hangout software) concurrently. I am so proud of those brave souls who put their hands up to join me as panelists and share my learning journey. If you haven't tried a Hangout yet please get yourself a headset and give it a go.

This prattling is by way of an apology for the quality of some of the hangouts I present but I will keep plugging on as they appear to fill a need (96 peple have watched the last recording on Youtube already). Apologies done here is this week's Hangout - Let's get Organised.

Advice for a Schoolfriend

Two days ago I received a text message from a very dear schoolfriend who has been dabbling in family history for quite a few years. Now that she has joined the retiree ranks she will have more time to get into research.

Her text message said: " Can u recommend a prog for family tree stuff so I can digitize all the records, certificates, letters etc that I have. I have so many unwieldy folders."

Rather than only write back to her I will offer some thoughts here on my blog and send her the link. What I say may not be relevant to all but parts of it may be useful to more than just my friend.

Friend and GeniAus 1961

Dear Schoolfriend,

So pleased that you want to get all your family history stuff organised, your kids may not be interested now but when they are old and gray like us they may become interested in their backgrounds. I think there are a few things you need to do.

Firstly you need to get a genealogy management software program into which you can record all the names, dates and details that you will find on all those documents you have. Secondly you need to organise all your digital and hardcopy files.

1. The software I use is Family Historian, an English product. You can download a trial version and use it for a month before you need to part with any cash. The benefits are:

* If you need help I am at the end of the phone,
* It manages multimedia well,
* It is an English product and your ancesstors come from that neck of the woods,
* It is eminently customisable but you can use it out of the (virtual) box,
* There is great support from the user group,
* You are one smart cookie so you will have no trouble using it,
* It uses native gedcom. don't worry about what this is, but it means that your data will transfer smoothly to another platform/program in years to come.

There are many software packages on the market and they will all do the job to a greater or lesser degree. If you don't want to spend any $$$ at the moment I would suggest you use the free pruned down version of Rootsmagic, Rootsmagic Essentials, it is available as a download. Quite a few of my friends use the fullblown version. I have installed the free one on my computer so I can help people at the Society and it does a good job of managing one's data, I can probably give some assistance with this too. Once you really catch the genealogy bug you will probably want more bells and whistles in your software. From either of these you can import your data into an app on your iPad and take it around with you.

You can print all sorts of reports and trees from your software package (not so many from a freebie one), having stuff organised into a database in your software package also helps you see where there are gaps in your information.

One thing to note is that you can store all of your documents in your genealogy program or you can store them elsewhere on your computer. I keep mine on my hard drive, I can explain why down the track.

2. With your documents it's a case of what comes first the chicken or the egg? Do whatever you feel comfortable with but you should aim to:
* Record all the information from them into your software program and make sure you add source information as you go even if your source is a person or an email (I learnt my lesson the hard way and have quite a few unsubstantiated assertions in my database). You must record where you found the information or you will have a fairytale on your hands.
* Start with yourself and husband then go on and add the descendants and ancestors.
* Scan all of your documents, toss out the more ephemeral things, keep the important certificates and original documents and store them away safely.
* Organise all your documents into a logical order, it doesn't matter how you do it but you must be consistent. It is a good idea to replicate the filing method you have for your hardcopy documents in your digital files.
* FYI I have a set of Family History folders on my hard drive, in Family History - People I have one subfolder for each surname I am researching. Where there are people with lots of documents I make personal subfolders within each surname folder. You can throw all sorts of files in together: sound, images, docs, pdfs, videos. Some people keep Paternal and Maternal lines in separate folders, others file by document type putting all Birth certs together, all newspaper clippings together etc. Others do it differently.
* I also have a folder for Family History - Places where I put stuff about various ancestral towns, I have a subfolder there for each town. I may put maps, photos, news articles, cemetery info into these folders.
* I also have a Family History - Sorting folder where I park newly digitised stuff  from which I need to extract data prior to filing. You could actually start by putting everything in something like this and move each file to an appropriate folder once you have dealt with it.
* My hardcopy files are organised by Surname and Forename just like my digital stuff and then chronogically so Birth comes before Baptism and Death before Burial.
* It is important to have some sort of file naming convention that you use consistently. For people I use Surname, Forenames dates and some sort of description eg Duncan, Francis 1900-1963 Birth Certificate or Curry, Thomas William 1877-1954 Obituary SMH 19540832.
* Once you've organised all that you have you will need to have a Research Log to keep track of what you need to do next and what you have done already. Family Historian can deal with this or you may consider Evernote that we talked about the other day or you could use a spreadsheet.

The most important thing to do is to make a start. I hope I haven't frightened you off.

Love, Jill

GeniAus and Friend 1970

Upsizing

I'm on the move.

For a few years now I have had difficulty negotiating the boxes in my study to get to my desk, filing cabinet and shelves hence I have lots of filing to do and my study is a big mess. I had taken to doing my genealogy "work: on the kitchen table and that had become quite cluttered. The space situation hasn't been helped as my study doubles as the babies' room with a cot and change table.  Sometime last year Mr Geniaus suggested that we move the twin beds out of our 3rd bedroom and put them in my small study (Bed 3 is only used by the Grandkids when they sleep over) and that the cot, change table and I move into the larger room. I didn't say no.

Yesterday Mr Geniaus had finished painting the new shelves he bought for me on eBay so the big move was on. Already I have emptied a couple of boxes and sorted through some papers. The folders that I organised and labelled last year are all arranged on the new shelves and  my genealogy books have been moved off our regular shelves and are in my new study with me.

I was concerned that our wireless internet wouldn't reach my new digs which are at the end of the house but thankfully I have a reasonable signal. I cannot get over how much space I have even though I am surrounded by cartons of photos and travel trivia that will take me ages to sort. After the weekend and the Hoo-Haa of Mother's Day we'll bring in another large shelf which will hopefully house all the photo albums.

Thanks to Mr Geniaus for organising my genealogy cave. I love it.  I was feeling guilty that I have so much space and he has a compact study but it just struck me that he has his big green shed plus storage under the house for all his toys.

I just hope the Grandkids enjoy their cosy new room when they stay over next week.

Fling it in the Folder - Progress

Blog Statistics tell me that my Fling it in the Folder-My Digital Filing System blog post is the most visited of my blog posts; it has also attracted a healthy number of comments.

My simple filing system has evolved and grown since I penned that original post  four months ago. I have been adding lots of resources so it has changed.  It is still a simple system with a flat structure, but will remain dynamic as my practices change and collection of resources grows.

I have renamed some folders, added a few more and appear to have lost one. Four months ago the folders on my external HDD looked like this:

May 20 2011

It now looks like this:

September 26, 2011

Where appropriate I have added subfolders to the folders listed above. The People and Places folders are where this was most needed.

Blog and website bits is a new folder in which I keep resources that I might use on my Geniaus blog or my websites. I made this folder after I changed the header image on my blog, wanted to reinstate it and couldn't find it. 

GeniMates is a new folder where I keep resources for my GeniMates blog.

KHS is the new folder in which I keep information relating to my membership of the Ku-ring-gai Historical Society, It's where I file the society newsletters that arrive by email.

People replaces my old Names folder. I renamed this because it is about individuals.

Rootstech is where I file everything to do with this conference. There are two sub-folders 2011 and 2012. My photos and the syllabus from 2011 are in that folder. For 2012 there are my proposal submissions, proposal acceptances copies of  the information I have sent to Rootstech relating to my Official Blogger role.

Scans to sort is a holding pen. It is the place where I keep scanned files until I have examined them and recorded details in my genealogy database. I then pop them in the folder that is the best fit for them. 

Ships is a new folder. As all of our ancestors arrived in Australia by ship (there was no other way to get here) they play an important part in my family story. This folder has images of ships, copies of surgeons' journals from convict ships and recounts of voyages by my ancestors' fellow travellers.

Missing is my Research Log. I moved this from an Excel spreadsheet to a Google Doc Spreadsheet. Perhaps I should keep a copy on the Hard Drive.

At this point in time I am happy with the present iteration of Fling it in the Folder - My Digital Fling System. I wonder how my activities over the next few months will shape the next iteration.

Time to crack open the bubbly

I took advantage of four visitor-free days this week to empty my genealogy folders/binders and my boxes of filing out of my study. I can hardly move in my study so I took all of this gear to the dining room where I was able to spread it out.

Firstly I sorted all the papers, I put each piece in a plastic sleeve then sorted them into abc order by surname. Then the filing frenzy began, this was more difficult than my digital filing episode, Fling it in the folder, a number of weeks ago as the physical folders/binders are cumbersome and the plastic sleeves slippery. I rearranged the contents of some folders to make the distribution of files a bit more even.  I now all except a few items that need to be scanned organised in my 44 folders/binders.

I have a folder (or two or three) for each member of my immediate family ie, parents, husband, parents and parents-in-law, children and grandchildren. For each surname that warrants it I have a surname folder, the rest of the people are filed in one abc sequence by surname then first name then date of birth (if two or three share the same name). I have additional folders for places, learning materials and correspondence. This organisation mirrors my digital filing system.

Three or four years ago when I indicated that I needed to organise my files my husband bought me a labelmaker. I finally opened the packaging on that a couple of days ago and worked out how to operate it; all of my folders now sport clear labels. Just half an hour ago I moved those 44 folders back into my study.

I am feeling quite elated that this job that has been hanging over my head for so long and causing me grief has been conquered.  If I wasn't home alone I would crack open a bottle of bubbly. Instead I am sharing my joy with you, my GeniMates.

Fling it in the folder - my digital filing system

In a couple of previous posts I have alluded to my digital filing system and, in a comment on one of those posts, Sharon Brennan asked me "Can you describe your filing system??

I have hesitated in doing so because my system is neither scientific or complex. It is a simple system that works for me. Having trained in Librarianship many years ago I am in the habit of putting things in alphabetical order so this is the simple basis of my system. With digital systems I prefer a flat structure to one that is deeply hierarchical requiring lots of drilling down to access information.

I have already spoken of my scanning station and my commitment to scanning all the bits of paper I have related to my genealogy obsession. I have also talked about what I do with conference papers.

My system is to "Fling it in the folder". I have a series of folders set up on my hard drive, each file I have, irrespective of format, goes into the appropriate folder or sub-folder. All my image files are additionally tagged with Picasa software.

I do not worry about linking Places in that folder to People in that folder or creating other similar relationships between files (but I guess I could hyperlink them if I felt the need at a later date) as my genealogy software manages that for me.

The folders are:

Most of the labels are self explanatory but some need clarification.

Correspondence contains genealogy letters of a general nature. Those about a specific surname or person are filed in the Names folder.

Curry All  stores files about the Curry surname in Australia ready for when I have the time or inclination to conduct a one-name study.


Geniaus Backup  is a backup of my family site files ie templates and design. I don't need to back up the data as the backup is my TMG database and its backups.

Geniaus Talks is the home of my talks and presentations.

Names is the biggest folder. It has some sorting folders that are prefixed with 00 and then a folder for each surname in my database.

Within each name folder is a series of documents and folders. Each file name is in the format:
Lastname, Firstname DoB File description.

Once I have more than three or four files for an individual he or she gets a folder labelled with: Lastname, Firstname Do.

Odds & Sods is just that. The place where I fling  graphics, cartoons and other ephemera.


Our  Diary is peculiar to me. It contains an Excel spreadsheet that is my digital diary; the folder also contains other documents such as invitations, programs, tickets that are hyperlinked from the corresponding entry in the diary.

This diary from the day of my parent's marriage has been constructed over the years from documents, printed diaries, old calendars, receipts, certificates, recollections, newspaper clippings and by uing photographs as prompts. I  presently use Outlook for my diary and periodically export this into the Our Diary spreadsheet.

The Headings for this spreadsheet are: Day, Date, Time, Details, Source 1, Source 2, Source 3.

Places is similar to names but contains folders with maps and information about the places of my ancestors. Thes include, Towns, Houses and Chruches.

Presentations has been explained in a previous blog post,Where do you put them? Conference Papers


Research Log and Plans does not house my master research log(that is a Google Docs spreadsheet) but the smaller logs I create when I am going to visit a particular repository, resource or place eg The National Archives, The Family History Library, or The National Library of Australia.

TMG and TNG are where one finds files relating to my two genealogy software programs. These folders do not have family data.

I keep and tag all of my bookmarks in Delicious and use Picasa to tag and organise my photographs. Librarything is my program of choice for organising my books.

Perusing this list I am reminded of one other folder - Genealogy - Scans to sort. This is where my scans live until I file them. For consistency I think it will be renamed.

Phew! That was a post and a half - hope it answers your question, Sharon.

Scanning Station

As a result of my recent retirement and things learnt in a webinar this week I am getting serious about scanning.

Filing is not my forte; I have been a little lax lately as I knew retirement was approaching and that I  soon would have lots of time to sort out papers. The result is a safety hazard on my study floor ie a couple of boxes of papers for filing.  When I receive a paper document or photograph I usually add any data I can glean to my database and toss the resource into a cardboard box for filing in my genealogy folders.

I had intended putting all of this in order, filing it and, at some later date, scanning the contents of all my folders. I now realise that that would mean double handling of the unfiled docs. So I made a decision to scan all of those docs before I filed them away. With this decision made I had to think about scanning. I need to make it easy for myself to do this task or my good intentions will fly out the window.

My Flip-Pal Mobile scanner is good for scanning when I am out and about or for things I need to email in a hurry but it doesn't scan in tiff format. The need to scan in tiff was reinforced in the webinar this week. That means that I should use my desktop scanner which, although it is a few years old, does a sterling job. Since moving to Windows Vista I have had numerous problems with the scanner and laptop crashing. I bit the bullet and downloaded new drivers for the scanner this week but that didn't help the situation.

Then I remembered my netbook that sits on a shelf when I am not travelling. This tech toy runs Windows XP. I wondered if it would have the guts to deal with large scanning jobs. I downloaded the drivers, plugged in the scanner, did two scans (after which the Vista laptop crashes), held my breath and kept on scanning for a couple of hours. I tried again the next day and it worked like a dream.

Hey presto, I now have a permanent scanning station set up in my study so there is no excuse for not scanning documents when they arrive.

I already have a filing system set up for soft copies of documents on an external drive (backed up to another external drive). So all I have to do is save the new scans into a folder "Genealogy scans to be sorted", rename them, plug the hard drive into the netbook and transfer them into their appropriate folders.

And while the scanner groans as it scans huge tiff files I can paly on my shiny new toy.