Organising Resources

[cowdogsam]

A topic with no right or wrong answers. Just personal preferences.

I think i've come to that 'stage' where my chaotic filing cabinet of a hard drive needs to be sorted for the greater good.
Even if that in turn means spending a good few hours (translate to days!) doing so.

Soooooo.......

How do you organise all the information you aquire?

All the bmd transcriptions you get, the bits from various webites that each involve opening another document to check when you are looking for, all the phillimores, and god alone knows what else we end up with along the way.

Is it practical to make a one sheet fits all spead sheet, or database? Or is it best to just muddle through opening numerous pdf's until you find the one you were actually looking for?

Yes I know that's the wrong answer, I also know that this is not going to be a 'quick' process

The floor is open.

Suggestions on a postcard

[donne]

I would guess that most people on this forum would be using a genealogical database program. I'm not quite sure if this is what you mean, but I use the facilities of my program to record sources and the source repository. When I started I was not meticulous in doing this, thinking it would be easy to remember, but now I'm having to backtrack to fill in the gaps.

If I've made a transcript I usually copy the text into the 'Notes' section of the source record. For other material, like photographs of documents taken at a record office, I use Picassa (free from Google) to catalogue the photos with keywords and captions so I can find them later by searching on these words. For paper copies, I would scan these as pdfs and use a program like Paperport to catalogue these with keywords.

[Cornish Terrier]

Everytime I try and tidy up I end up with another mess within a few days!!

However, with my BMD transcriptions I do have some organisation!

As I have been able to find them I have downloaded transcriptions of BMDs regardless of whether the Parish was of particular interest or not.

I have a folder that I have called Online Parish Registers.

Within that folder I have a folder for each Parish.

And within each Parish folder I have separate folders for Baptisms, Marriages and Burials with the transcriptions therein filed as appropriate.

All Transcriptions are labelled so it is fairly simple to find what you need at any given time.

With things like Protestation Returns, Hearth Tax Lists and so on I simply save them to the appropriate Parish folder.

Everything for any one Parish should then be together.

I have also downloaded images of every Census record that I could find for my family.

These are kept in folders for each Census year - 1841, 1851 etc. for the UK and 1850, 1860 etc. for the US.

Each Census sheet is labelled with the year, the place and the name of the main person.

Again all kept within the one folder called .................. Census Records!

Where I have had to be a little different is with US BMDs.

Although there are a number available I have not been downloading all the BMD Transcriptions that I have found.

But I have found lots of individual records for family members.

In this case I have a folder set up for US State BDMs.
Within this folder is a Folder for each State and records for each particular State are filed in that folder.

CT

[cowdogsam]

Sorry for the late reply.

Cornwall beckoned

CT i think we have similar problems Folders within folders, or in my case more folders nested so far down within others than I know what to do with

I think the biggest problem i've got with the information i've collected is i 'forget' what i've got, and end up running around in circles looking for something i've already got
Or if for instance i'm trying to find a marriage for someone form Zennor, and don't find them in the relevant phillimores, i then end up opening up god knows how many other documents trying to find them in nearby parishes.

It would be nice to have some sort of database that covers all parishes. But practically i'm not sure it's going to work.

As for my main family tree that is done with Family Tree Maker. I'm a bit locked into that program now because of how it handles the media aspect, and not being able to export the media to another program, which with the amount of images i've got in there (thousands) I don't fancy starting from scratch putting into another program


Picassa and paperport i'll look into.
At the moment all scans and images are kept as .jpg images ...... not very friendly when it comes to searching for something


If anyone has any other suggestions please feel free to post. I'll look into all options that may make this task a little easier.

[Cornish Terrier]

Cornwall Must Come First!!! ;D

Believe me - I have the same problem with the filing.

One thing you could do with a lot of the items is to file them by Type and then within the relevent Parish.

Using Zennor as an example:-

Gather all your PR information together and place it in its own folder.
Do likewise with information about the Parish itself and also with individual families.

Each of these folders should then be placed under the general Zennor folder and then do the same with other Parishes of interest.

For General PR information like Phillimore you could have a separate section.

That might help neaten things up a little but you still need to solve the Search Problem.

Why not use the OPC site and IGI as your 'search tools'?

Not everything is there yet but these could be handy in helping identify where to look in your database.

The advantage here is that each (i.e. OPC and IGI) can be used for a Universal Search or for a Limited Search and once you find what you want then go to your database files for further information.

CT

[donne]

Aug 17, 2010 5:15:16 GMT -5 cowdogsam said:

Picassa and paperport i'll look into.
At the moment all scans and images are kept as .jpg images ...... not very friendly when it comes to searching for something

Picassa works with jpegs, but it's a real effort to add captions and keywords retrospectively if you have lots of images. However, it's the most satisfactory way I've found of keeping track of photos of documents I've taken at various visits to the CRO and the Courtney Library, as well as other family-related photos. I tried to move to pdfs since that format can handle text and image, but it's jpegs which come out of the camera. Incidentally, if you have scans of old family photos, Picassa has a neat face recognition facility which is quite good for recording people in family groups.

[Sarch]

Hi Cowdogsam

What version of Family Tree Maker are you using?

We converted to Family Tree Maker 2009 but with all the problems that it had reverted back to our previous version.

We are now going to try and convert to the latest version of FTM and I just hope they have sorted all the bugs out.


I try and file all my data (photos and copies of certificates) in Family Tree Maker with the person concerned. However I only do this with my local South African family database - I share another european database with a number of family members and because we email it to each other did not want to make the file size too large - that has changed with broadband tho'.

Sarch

[white]

Another handy photo program is Irfanview. A freebee on the internet. I have found this particularly handy when opening saved parish record pages from the new Family search org.pilot site.
Roy

[Sarch]

Hi Roy

Irfanview is a really great program esp as its free - I use it for my normal photos as well as documents etc. I find it very easy to used.

Sarch

[cowdogsam]

Roy - I'll have a look into Infraview.

For photo editing i'm using photoshop, and just for aquick look i use the windows preview. Anything i want to work with i open straight into photoshop though.

Sarch - Family Tree 2010.

I was using the 2006 version i think it was, then went up to 2009. Found 2009 a lot better to use, far friendlier on the eye.

Word of warning about 2010. If your struggling with 2009 DON'T upgrade to 2010. It's the same layout, but they use a different file system, so once it's in 2010 it's got to stay there. It's can't go back to 2009 or other previous versions.

And 2010 has some bugs

For a start you can over write your images

it also has a habit of losing information to do with who's linked to what, and places etc.

File handling was supposed to have been far better than 2009, but they've messed around with it and broke it

Donne - I think however i do this at this stage it's going to be a lot of work, especially if i want to make things easier to search.

It's going to take some serius thinking about before i start such a mamouth task though, to make sure i get it right before i start so i don't get half way thrugh and think, nope this isn't going to work either.

CT - I'm still mulling it all over. Obviously the new record search has just complicated things further

[Sarch]

Hi Cowdogsam

Don't say that. I am just hoping the new version is better!

With the first version of FTM 2009 (which we bought in 2008)
you lost your AKAs and it stripped away the numbering system.

Some of the reports didn't work and you could also not copy and paste
into a document but had to create pdf files.

You could also overwrite/overtype peoples names without
the program first double checking that thats what you wanted to do.

FTM developed some patches etc over the next six months
or so but really I feel "if it ain't broke don't fix it"

It was as if the new development team didn't have a clue what the customer
wanted as this was the takeover from Broderbund to Ancestry.
You got lots of pretty stuff but a lot of the nitty gritty seemed missing.

We kept everything in the original version as well as in the new FTM 2009 version
so it was easy to make the decision to revert backwards but a lot of people
didn't and had untold difficulties. :

I use Irfanview for family photos as I can easily adjust colour and brightness
and crop etc very easily. It also has redeye reduction for those
in flash pictures.

I also use Irfanviewto reduce the file size of photos and documents that I am going
to insert into Family Tree Maker - this means that I have two sets of photos and documents
one in a very large file size and one in a smaller size to fit into FTM.





Sarch

[cowdogsam]

Ah reports and stuff.

I forgot to mention that part.

FTM 2010 is missing some of the charts, reports etc that were in earlier versions. It seems we obviously don't need them


Another one for the not knowing what the customer wants section.

I don't know what 2011 will be like, but i won't be upgrading. I'll stick with 2010. I can't go back to 2009 so will have to put up with what i have.

I have to admit the charts etc in Family Historian are a lot better.

My husband has linked into the Royal lines, and FTM throws a major fit with the relationships because of all the cousin marriages.

Family Historian seems to manage that one quite well.

Hindsight eh

[Sarch]

Hi Cowdogsam

Will let you know how I get on with 2011

I have never had a problem with inter-family relationships in FTM and my brother married our stepmother's younger sister making him and my dad brothers-in-law.

Also have quite a lot of cousins marrying cousins and FTM has coped.


Sarch

[cowdogsam]

It can handle a bog standard cousin marrying cousin okay.

It's when you've got 8 lines all leading back to William the Conquerer, which inter-marry to the stage where your 22nd great grandfather is also your 20 great grand uncle, and husband of your 18th great grandmother.

Instead of taking you by the direct blood line, it takes the relationship as the shortest direct route back. So in the case of the above the relationship would show as being husband of your 18th great grandmother. Even though he is actually your 22nd great grandfather.



Trust me we have had some major head scratching here trying to work out why relationships were changing.

Oh and the chart for that is quite funny too..... with 8 lines back to William the Conq you end up with 8 instances of him at the top of the chart if you do an ancestor chart. And if you do a descendant chart you end up with 8 instances of my husband at the bottom.


Family Historian on the other hand only has one of either, and uses lines to join the various lines in the right places.