Oh, lookie what I found!!

[csziggy]

4. A tip for organizing all your scattered data

My Mom lent me her and my oldest sister's files of papers and notes on their genealogical research. I scanned every page and have it all as images on my computer. As I go through them, I can copy each page into the appropriate folder.

I keep folders for each family group and under that a folder for each individual. Files in those folders are dated by the event, with abbreviations for location, and a word for the type. So an image of a birth record would be for example 1814_NY_Cayuga_birth.jpg. I use the same convention for files downloaded from Ancestry or any other source. Each person's information is then easily sorted by the year and place.

As I sort the notes, I copy the image page over to the file, then change the name with the information for that person. It makes it easy to review and since often Mom and my sister made notations as to additional places to search, I can go try those when I am ready.

It took a while to scan everything, but now it's much easier to access and sort.