Archive for the ‘archive’ Category

Sorting Saturday ~ The Sloppy Genealogist

Posted: August 18, 2012 in archive, data, documents
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USS Missouri (Ship Desk)
Photo Credit: Kelly Vial via kellyvial.wordpress.com
Copyright © 2011, Kelly Vial

As a genealogist and family history researcher, you would think I’d be a little more organized! I am overwhelmed with emails of new information and document attachments! Now, what is the best way for me to sort through these? I think I need another filing cabinet! A filing cabinet just for my genealogy research! When I started my research I didn’t really need but just a little space in the back of my filing cabinet. Since I really didn’t have much as far as documents, except for the packets of information that I received from a family member oh so many years ago! Now it looks like my research is going to have to take up residence in another location 🙂

My handy, dandy printer just decided that it needs new ink cartridges! So what’s a girl to do with her digital documents when she can’t print them out right away? No CD’s either! What has my office world come to? Looks like I’m running out of everything, doesn’t it? I guess I need to make a trip to Costco and Office Max!

So I guess since I’m out of ink and I have no CD/DVD’s to make a genealogy back up disc, that I will have to resort to Evernote and then export all my documents into my Family Tree Maker 2012 software. There is so much that needs to be done! Did I mention how much I hate clutter? I can’t stand it when my computer files are all out of whack and not in their proper folders! Yes I did do that! It’s all my fault, just being lazy I guess!

MY TO-DO LIST

Re-stock my office supplies (make a list)

Organize my hierarchy mess of file folders on my laptop

Scan more photos (Oh so tedious; I think I have over 2000!)

Organize my file folders in my real world office (which happens to be my bedroom currently, in this tiny apartment)

Organize my file folders in my email account (Ugh..that should be tons of fun!)

Create a filing system that works wonders! (Is there a program out there for that?)

When I said organization is key in another blog post, I really meant it! It would have saved me so much time if I had accomplished everything like I was telling you how to be more organized! Ha! You remember that saying your mom may have told you at least once in your life? “Do as I say and not as I do!” That’s the way I at this moment! Here I am  writing about organization tips and not even doing it myself! All I can say is I’ll try to do better and not be such a sloppy genealogist 🙂

Sorting Saturday ~ Organizing Genealogy Records

Posted: July 13, 2012 in accuracy, Ancestry, ancestry library, archive
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file cabinets

file cabinets (Photo credit: redjar)

When I started researching my family’s genealogy more than 10 years ago, I never thought I would have all this documentation to sort through and organize. I have kept everything and I do mean everything! I really need to continue organizing, if truth be told. Granted, my filing cabinet is more organized than my photos are. When I moved from the mainland to Hawaii, I had so much stuff to pack and ship. To save space, I ended up having to put all those photos into boxes and having to take those photos out of old albums.  My photos were in storage for about a year and a half and I have just now begun to sort through all those photographs! Right now I am in the process of organizing and scanning them all into the ShoeBox app I installed on my iPhone. So far, I have created several different “shoe box albums”; this is definitely a work in progress! The bane of my existence is clutter!

Digital Files~

When documents are found or sent to me, I scan them so that I have a digital copy along with a hard copy. Since photos are already being digitized and uploaded to two different locations, I know they won’t be lost to me if something were to ever happen. My photographs are very important to me along with the important papers I have collected over time on my family. Since being hard at work creating digital copies of all my files, Hawaii has 3 different storms coming that are out in Pacific waters. One being a hurricane and another a tropical storm, so it’s crucial that I get these documents and photos organized and into digital format. Just in case! On my laptop, I have created an Ancestry folder, with sub folders included as to what sort of document, who the document belongs to and so on. I found that it is easiest for me to group the documents and images by creating file folder names for couples that I am researching. For example, I have a folder created for my father and paternal grandparents where I include everything that I have on them and put them in their respective folders. So much easier!

Saving emails related to my research is another task that I have accomplished. Not only do I keep a folder inside my email client, but I also have a hard copy of all emails sent to and from me from other family and researchers alike. I probably don’t have to do this but it’s OCD thing with me to save any correspondence that I have sent or received.

Some may want to keep everything research related on their laptop but it’s also a good idea to have a hard copy just in case your laptop crashes or your motherboard goes out. If that happens, consider your work lost forever!

File Folders~

Creating file folders according to surname is an ideal way to keep you organized too. You can buy a filing cabinet, file folders, hanging file folders and labels to tab each folder with the surnames you may be investigating. This is what I have done. It keeps everything in it’s proper place and it’s much easier to find if you ever have the need to refer back to someone in particular. I have folders on Cornett and Sutherland family members because that is who I am researching currently, but I also have Email correspondence folders, folders labeled with snail mail that were received by my family, family letters and documents. Then I also have created folders based on researchers too. When I was researching my Sutherland family from Scotland, I kept the documentation and letters, research packets, etc. So that’s one thumbs up for me! At least my file folders are somewhat organized and in their proper location. The only thing I think I would like to change is adding colored coded labels to help me find things better. Maybe label them all by surname and location.

When you have all your genealogy clutter organized, you will have an awesome filing system that is well organized and systematic.

A Word (Or More) To The Wise:

Keep your files and all the hard work you have done thus far up to date. If you are all finished with the tenuous task of getting every document, letter, email or whatever your document is in an organized state, please don’t ruin all that hard work by tossing a newly found document or a BMD record into just any file for safekeeping! You are already organized so why would you mess up your files and have to repeat the process all over again? Keep it straight; you will have less headaches trying to find what you are searching for. Who wants to spend time trying to locate one document that you thought you placed in the correct folder when all along it’s location is unknown and not in the place it should be. I definitely don’t want to search each individual folder for just one particular document!

Genealogy Search- Have You Hit the Proverbial Brick Wall?

Posted: June 20, 2011 in archive, Census Diggins, Genealogy, Google, Newspaper Archives, search engine
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Throughout the years of searching for your genealogical roots, I’m sure many of you have come to a brick wall in your searches. I know I have a time or two! How are you conducting your searches? The obvious answer would most likely be Google. I “Google” everything from computer problems to issues I may have with my car! You name it and Google has it; or do they? In recent news articles, genealogists have depended upon Google Archives to base some of their online researches and in the process, gathering information from archived newspapers and the like. Google Archives will no longer be there for us when we need it. Another brick wall indeed!
Google Newspaper Archive Shutdown

Image Source
Brick Wall Breaker Chic





So you’ve hit a brick wall; what does that do to your research? Is there another way around this wall? Of course there is. There has to be another route to take! Which way will you go to get around this wall?
Here are a few things we can do as genealogists:


Lack Of Internet Structure- mainly people like yourself conduct online researches from the skills acquired by using their local libraries, archives, and structured websites like Ancestry. Your typical search for topics over a broad network of web sites won’t get you very far. So just think about it for a second, the Internet has no basic structure in which to base a really good, thorough search on whatever topic that you may need information for. Genealogy records are historic archives, which are probably hiding among the dust particles of the Internet, waiting for you to dust them off. If no one finds them, they will be there forever collecting even more dust bunnies.
Bring your searches within reach!


Put On Your Search Engine “Thinking Cap”- A search engine doesn’t have a brain like we do. It just searches for what we tell it to. You could search for <chair> or the name <Robert> for example, we know <Robert> is the name of a person but the search engine doesn’t; it’s just searching for that particular tag and then delivers the web pages to you based upon what you typed in the search bar. So you will need to think more on the lines like a search engine does. 


The results weren’t exactly specific to what I was originally seeking. Think outside the search engine “box”, if you will. Hopefully your future searches will be fruitful and give you the exact results you were looking for. Proximity searches look over the text of billions of web pages for the tags I mentioned earlier. How do you think this affects my research when I am seeking an ancestor? I’ll tell you, its not very good. It would be easier to search for an ancestor with a unique name versus “Ann Jones”. The results you receive will be much better. So it’s much easier to start off searching for the least common names in your family tree, then work from that family of names that were included, such as siblings, or parents. 

What is the best genealogy search engine to use? Here are a few links to try just to see which one yields the best results for you.

I Found It
Ancestor Hunt
Search For Ancestors
Census Diggins





Google Archives- A Great Resource

Posted: June 12, 2011 in archive, Google, keywords, newspaper, time period
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English: Google Logo officially released on Ma...

English: Google Logo officially released on May 2010 (Photo credit: Wikipedia)

While researching my family, I was looking for old newspaper articles that may have had the Cornett surname  included. I found Google Archives; you can search a time period specifically related to your particular search criteria. Very interesting! 


Google News Archive


Once you have entered your search criteria, a list of web pages comes up for you to explore. How great is that? I have included a sample based on my own search for Cornett, you can see the link for it below. I hope Google doesn’t get rid of this archive service. There are more people than I know of that are in search of their family roots. Many are searching the Cornett surname, as I have seen on many forums across the web. This is a great tool that will give you a peek into history as it was back in the day. For my search, I included the search from the year 1800-1900 and this is just one of the pages that came up.


Sample Archive


Will Google abandon their newspaper archive? I have seen some websites that say they will. It’s a good idea to take advantage of this service just in case they do abandon it. There aren’t many web pages that I know of that offers a free service like this. Mostly, from what I have seen are paid subscriptions. I don’t feel that I should have to pay for a subscription, that I wouldn’t use much except in my genealogy research. Do you think we should have to pay for something like this? Would a paid subscription really be worth the money? What if you don’t find what you are looking for? It would be money wasted.  What are your thoughts on paid subscriptions such as these?