Occasionally, I am asked about how and what I keep in digital format for my genealogy research and attached to my family tree.
Last year, I posted one explanation of how I save my digital records, but I only touched on how I decide what to keep and what to discard.
So, exactly how do I decide what to do with my genealogical documents, notes and correspondence?
- Let’s begin with the simple stuff. Concerning genealogically-related letters written back and forth in the pre-internet age, I have reviewed the relevance of each. The letters themselves have been disposed of. Whether or not I scanned them beforehand depends on their genealogical value. For example, I have a large collection of letter with a distant Williams relative who has since passed away. She and I did many hours of individual original research and shared our findings. Those letters have been digitized, saved and backed up.
- What do I do with my own notes? I still take notes with pen and paper because I find it much easier to check details. However, I don’t keep any of my own notes. Instead, once I verify information or determine that it doesn’t pertain to the correct person, I generally add those notes into my genealogical software program and attach them to an individual person or even to a family, if relevant. I have absolutely zero stacks of paper notes anywhere, aside from a current investigation.
- I have a huge collection of original photographs which I’ve inherited and some original records saved by various family members. Those paper copies are all saved in archival quality albums, but each and every one of them has been digitized.
- Today, most of the records I find in my research are in digital format. I have never owned the original paper copy and those documents are saved digitally. I rarely print them out unless perhaps there is a legibility issue of some kind which requires enlargement, printing and perhaps examining with a magnifying glass. In those cases, if I feel the need to save the digital record because of the information it contains, I will open Word, create a transcription and save both the record and the transcription.
That, in a nutshell, is how I handle the digital format of my genealogy research. “Old stuff” is carefully preserved, while “new stuff” lives a digital life.
Good advice. I’m still winnowing out paper notes from file folders and adding the comments to my family trees on Ancestry, WikiTree, MyHeritage. Rediscovered some great clues this way.
I agree with your process and do pretty much the same thing. I do have many spiral-bound notebooks where I kept research notes and I haven’t done anything with them yet. The information is entered into the genealogy software program. My plan one day is to read through them and capture anything that I hadn’t already done and then discard. What I worry about is the digital stuff. What will happen to them when I’m gone?
Hi Linda. I’m putting together an article for Trustworthy.com about generational differences in how people store important documents and family information. Would you be available for a brief email exchange? I might like to include a comment or two from you in the piece.
Thanks so much!