Yesterday I took the time to join in a hangout on air with Jill who blogs at Geniaus.
The discussion was about organising genealogical research, which was triggered by a blog post written by Sharon who blogs at Gathering Dust and I shared, probably somewhat badly what I do with my research. You can read Sharon’s post HERE
Pauleen Cass shared her thoughts via her blog and I thought I would explain further what I do.
Firstly, let me explain that I began researching before the internet existed as we know it. I gathered research by visiting archives and using the postal service.
I also have a family history where my maternal line has lived within the parimeters of three Counties in England – Surrey, Sussex and Hampshire for around 300 years. It is therefore not too surprising that I have some surnames that occur more than once and several lines that cross over through intermarriage.
I also have the added complication that my husband’s surname does on occasions become Goacher instead of Goucher and I have Goacher’s in my maternal line. There does not appear to be any connection between my Goachers to my husband’s family but…….
- My genealogical software program, I use Roots Magic contains a file called “Main File”
- I have a physical folders called Main File (JDG) for my maternal ancestry and
- I have a digital folder called Main File (JDG)
- I have a physical folder called Main File (SPG) for my husband’s ancestry and
- I have a digital folder called Main File (SPG)
- I also have two filing cabinets which hold suspension files such as shown in the picture here. I have a file for each surname where the material does not (or does not currently) provide a link to my own ancestry.
- I also have three drawers and a digital files of material relating to my three One Place Studies
- I also have two drawers for my two One-Name or surname researcher relating to my two Guild of One-Name registered studies of
I also have numerous papers and digital files that relate to other places where my ancestors lived such as
- Geelong Victoria
- Wonersh Surrey
- Wagga Wagga NSW
- Guildford Surrey in general
- My own family
- My specific studies – Surnames / Places / items
- Other material that does not fit and perhaps never will!
- Index Cards (13th March 2012)
- Developing a digital organisation scheme (14th January 2012)
- Evernote and Saving Emails (19th November 2013)
- More on Evernote (20th November 2013)
- Embracing One-Note (24th September 2013)
- More on One-Note (13th May 2014)
- Talking and Playing with Evernote (6th March 2014)
- One-Note >> Evernote (10th September 2014)
- Evernote Genealogy Community
- Evernote Unofficial Community
- Evernote Genealogists on Face Book
It's interesting to see how other people organise their records. The filing system I devised for my paper records still works just fine after 30 years, but I need to improve the way I organise digital records. Nancy Loe's guides have been a huge help. The link is in my post, Genealogy Do-Over or Source-Based Incremental Fix?
LikeLike
Jill it is very tricky when you the hangout host & looking at the social media too. I find that invites not arriving & causing issues the routine which is very frustrating.
LikeLike
BTW Our Wonersh family was Hamshere/Hamshire.
LikeLike
Thanks, Julie, sometimes when I am moderating a Hangout I can't concentrate on all the detail people are sharing. I wil digest this slowly.
LikeLike
Thanks! I will check this out!
LikeLike
Oh do give it another try! The layout is very different to One-Note. You simply have one notebook and all notes are listed inside. You can stack notebooks (eg Genealogy is the main note book and inside there are say another 6 notebooks each representing a family name).
Have a look at the layout of this shared notebook which is my weblinks notebook https://www.evernote.com/pub/anglersrest/weblinks then you can get the idea of how I use this notebook.
The thing to decide on is do you want to use notebooks or tags or a mixture of both? Note book genealogy and all genealogy research goes in the one note book with tags of the surname. I use Surname – Butcher for example or do you want to use a note book for the biggest or more significant family lines? I do a mixture of the two!
LikeLike
Thank you for sharing this! I love reading how others organize their research. I also use RootsMagic and it's not often I see someone else mention they do! I have tried using Evernote for genealogy but I don't think I got the hang of it the first time. I may have to try again!
LikeLike
Thanks Pauleen. I think with Evernote it evolves and I didn't feel that was the case with One-Note. I suspect that over the next year I will transfer all the material to Evernote and archive the material in one notebook in One-Note and back up to OneDrive.
There is an import function into Evernote, but how robust that is I don't know.
LikeLike
Thanks for sharing Julie…I get tired just following all you do 🙂 Like you I've become a fan of Evernote premium and use it a lot though I'm sure I could do more,
LikeLike