Paper Free Office

So at work, we are needing more space but have limited storage.  This makes me think of the mythical paperless office.  So I did some research and found some ideas of how to get started.  But the suggestions are actually better for my home.  I kind of hate mail.  There is just so much paper all the time.  My kids are out of school so I'm not even seeing that flow of paper.  Yet I feel like there is just too much paper all over the place.  It also doesn't help that my husband writes things down on random pieces of paper and leaves them in his pocket or laying around the house.

So I'm forging ahead to eliminate paper clutter.  Mail should go in one spot, scan and tag and then shred that sucker!

UPDATE:  I didn't post this before but I have been making an effort to move paper along faster.  I did purchase a new scanner (I love scanners!).  And it is better than I thought it would be.  I did choice one with OCR since, if I'm getting a new scanner might as well have something I didn't before!  Since my home scanner is even better than the work one, I'm bring paperwork home to scan and eliminate more clutter!!

Do-Over Log Jam

www.catskillarchive.com

One of my first ventures into the trenches of Genealogy in 1997 (about) was meeting with my mother's cousin who had done TONS and TONS of work on our shared line.  She very generously shared by copying all her files that included newspaper clippings and handwritten memories.  So I started as a name collector with that huge file of handwritten family group sheets.  But what I did NOT do was sourcing.  I had no idea where that name or date originated.  I negated the work done by others by not giving credit to the original.

As I go back through those pages plus other collections, I'm looking at a lifetime of work by many as well as record of who came before me.  I'm not a name collector.  Rather I'm honoring the work of my relatives.  The years and years of their efforts (typing, organizing, going to libraries) are worth the hours of effort by me.  Their love of family and history deserves preservation.  What I'm hoping to pass down to my descendants is a well organized record of my work, including names and faces and stories of those who came before,

Organizing Genealogy Photos: Part 3

After scanning and placing the photos into a sort file, I than go back to organize.  Each family unit has an individual file.  (Once a couple is married, then they become a unit but their younger pictures stay with the parents.)  Each picture and a backup tiff file are placed into the correct family unit.  But I also wanted to capture the information on the back of the photos as well as giving additional information.  So I turned to Bento again.

I use Bento to organize my other genealogy files so why not use it for pictures as well?  I created a database to record the family name, the subject, the type of photo, who gave me the photo, where it is stored and a bunch of other information.  This way I can keep a visual record along with as much other information I need to store.  Plus since I have the surname as a separate field, I can sort the records by name.  This makes it easier to share specific family pictures.  Another important field is where the photo is stored.  Each of my archive boxes are listed, along with some places like my mother's heritage album.  Now I have a record of what is in each box too!  So this might not be a perfect way to organize pictures, but so far it is working out pretty well.

Organizing Genealogy Photos: Part 2

The next step is scanning.  I already had a flatbed scanner, an Epson Perfection V300.  I had purchased this scanner a number of years before because I could scan slides as well as regular photos.  It has worked really well for me and I can scan to tiff or jpeg formats.  But it is not fast.  It actually seems to take longer to scan than when I first got it!  Since the Flip-Pal had recently come out, I though that smaller scanner would be great for all the snap shots I had.  The only thing is that the Flip-pal only scans to jpeg.

Usually I scan older or larger pictures with the Epson.  This way I am getting a really clean scan and I already have the image as a tiff.  This does take time but I can scan a few smaller pictures at a time and the scanner automatically finds the edges so there isn't a lot of cropping.  (I like to listen to different podcasts while doing the scanning since I don't have to think really hard about what I am doing and it makes the time go faster!)

I can scan wallet size or snapshots with the flip-pal and move much quicker through a stack.  I scanned over 300 pictures in just a few hours.  I do have rechargeable batteries since it does go through batteries.  After scanning each photo I store the digital file into a sort folder on my desktop for the next step.  Each photo does need to be cropped since the scan is of the entire glass, not just the picture.  I stack the printed photos so that they will be in the same order as the scanned images.  This does save some time when it comes to organizing the photos on my computer.

Organizing Genealogy Photos: Part 1

some of the photo boxes plus the slide box

Organizing photos is actually pretty personal in that everyone has their own system.  I had been scrapping and scanning my own pictures since I had kids but there was a lot of pre-kids pictures that was just stashed in boxes. Then my mom gave me a ton of photos that she had from her mother and I needed a system.  I did search the internet but not a lot really seemed helpful.  Then I asked my father-in-law for his pictures because I knew they were just in boxes in the top of the closet and I wanted to discover that side of the family.  Now I really had a problem and needed to find a solution fast!

First off I don't have a lot of extra money so I knew I had to do all the scanning and organizing myself. So the first problem I had to tackle was where to put the pictures after I scanned them.  I just could not return them to the plastic bags or boxes or old albums since they would get more damaged that way.  I knew I needed to get archival boxes (and already had gotten 1 box for old slides) but how many?  At this point I decided that I needed to divide into four groups.  My parents are divorced so having their family pictures separate works and my mother-in-law had also died so that seemed to work okay as well.  So I purchased four regular size boxes for each family surname (Groenhof, Naber, Green, Vorce).  But I also had quite a few pictures that were bigger than the standard size picture box.  So I purchased three boxes for pictures up to size 12x9.  (The reason I went with three is because my side just didn't have a ton of large pictures so I could easily store them in one box.)  But I also had some really large pictures of my kids as well as heritage pictures that needed a bigger box. So I purchased one box (19.5 x 13) to hold all those really large pictures that would not be brought out much.

I wrote on the side of each archival box the size so I would know which box fit which picture and added initials of the family (G/N for my side).  Plus I labeled the four small boxes with the family name as well.  So now it was time to start scanning!

Slides, Slides, Slides - Every Where!

I am trying to get through all the slides but they just keep haunting me!  I finally let go of labeling all the slides correctly.   No one will probably care and if they do, they can fix them!  So now I am renaming all by date since the number of the boxes really doesn't matter.  I also bought a large archival box to store ALL the slides.  Once they are in that box, I don't ever want to look at them again.  I need to get through these things by Christmas!!

Scanning slides - update

Well, the organization portion of the slide scanning has not gone very well. Especially the July 1977 slides from the family trip out west through Colorado and other places. Since I don't remember the trip at all, it is difficult to match up the description on the back of the slide case to the actual slide. BUT the slides CANNOT sit any longer gathering dust and waiting for the cat to have a spaz attack in the middle of them (again). I have scanned 158 slides with the date from the slide and a number. I still have many more to go!

So above is a picture from the group I scanned recently. Horses walking along the road BUT with the additional treat of my brother hanging out the window! I find these picture, with someone in the mirror, quite amusing. I cannot image my father didn't stop to look at things during the trip since the Sunday drives we took in our youth were very long and boring. But my mother took quite a few pictures, some slightly blurred, out of the moving car so there are shots of my Mom in the mirror or my father's arm while he is driving. This was life pre-digital!

New project

This week, I was contacted by my cousin's mother-in-law. She is interested in genealogy and had been researching my cousin's father's side. My aunt had her contact me because of my genealogy information for the Naber's. Now it wasn't hard to just send her a tree with the ancestors but she really wanted something she could share with my cousin that he would be interested in. And only genealogist are interested in looking at family group sheets! But a narration of the family history with stories is something different. Unfortunately, I don't have anything written out. And I am not even sure I will ever be able to do so.

But last fall when I attend the Western Michigan Genealogy Society's Got Ancestors Conference, I attended a session with George Morgan about creating time line/outlines for each ancestor. This is something I would like to do and I think it would be easier to create a narration from this than off the cuff. On the other hand, I did do one interesting thing for my father's side of the family that everyone (non-genealogists) seemed to think was interested. I created a one page document about his ancestors immigration to the United States with pictures. So this is something I can do for the other immigration family's as well. I will be posting the information from the one I already did and then any future ones as well!

iFamily for Leopard, Updated!

I think I mentioned in a previous post that iFamily didn't seem to have any updates so I thought I would have to switch programs. Fortunately, this is not true any longer! There is an update available to previous owners so now my program has stopped asking me to check for updates. Frankly, I didn't even care what the updates were, I just wanted the message to stop!

After I updated, I started a new file that would include sourcing for everyone in the file. This was a lot easier than I thought it would be for my mother's side of the family. I actually reached the 4th great-grandfather generation (for my children), at least with names. But I did discover that I don't have my father's birth record so I am not able to go farther on that side until I get a hold of him. I also have nothing added for my husband's family for the exact same reason. Something to work on!

Scanning Slides

My family has slides. Back in the good old days (70's & 80's), slides were popular and I really do not understand why! Film still had to be sent in since each picture has its own little holder. You had to have a projector and screen (or a blank wall). And you had to have a willing or captive audience. I know that we as a family watched the slides because we had a projector. But it seems like a labor intensive event. Plus my mother had to sort the slides into the holders, making sure they were facing the correct direction and label the back of the case for each picture.

So now the slides are in my possession and I have to scan each one into a digital format so that everyone in my family can enjoy the old pictures without having a projector. I actually love my scanner, a Epson Perfection V300, but it is time consuming. Plus I have to reorganize the pictures since they had been separated by who was in the picture at one point. This was in order to hand off the slides to the individuals but that really isn't very practical since some pictures have more than one person AND you would need a projector to view them! We have 11 holders which hold 100 pictures each. YOU do the math!

By the way, the picture is me at about 4 with my favorite animals! There are lots of pictures of me and kitties :) As you can see the scan came out pretty good and I only did a little color modification to brighten it up.

Fresh Start Tree

A "Fresh Start Tree" is starting a new family file with sourcing for EVERY person and event. And, yes, I have contemplated doing this for a long time because I really want to have a clean tree. Today Genea-Musings posted discussing the problems with his tree and how he doesn't really want to start fresh. But he comments about another blogger, Amy Coffin, who did start over. So I went to her blog. (Turns out she is a Librarian also!) She started fresh with a new genealogy software program and went from there.

I really think that my work with Bento will make sourcing a lot easier, if or when I start fresh. I could start right now but I don't have a new genealogy program to use yet. My current program, which I love, is iFamily for Leopard but there isn't going to be any updates unless the program is sold to someone else. It has been over a year and there has been nothing new. But Dick Eastman blogged about a new program called Branches. He was very impressed with it after giving it a test go which makes me excited! But the downside is that there is only a Windows version available. At least there is talk about a Mac version unlike Roots Magic which I would love to use, if I could use it on Mac without running Windows. I don't want to pollute me Mac :)

Organization Update

So I have been working hard(ish) on my files! I have one drawer emptied out, not the smallish drawers either, a very long filing cabinet. What I ended up doing was scanning the obituaries and miscellaneous stuff and filing them by family group.

But I put the internet stuff into folders by site. I already did the Holland Sentinel archives lookups and now I am starting on the GenLias. I have a LOT of dutch ancestors (and their families) so this file is kind of full. (The largest file is actually from a site called Digital Resources of the Netherlands but now I am wondering if I can just use GenLias instead.) Right now I am questioning the dates that are listed since they are labeled Registered. I wonder if the date is actually the event date or the day the event was recorded. Since I haven't been able to find the answer, I am plowing forward with inputting this information into my Bento file and linking to each person.

I do consider the information a primary source since it was recorded at the time of the event. Although I am bothered that the information I am looking at isn't a scanned image but transcribed which does leave room for error. Since I will probably never be able to actually see the documents, I will just have to work with what I have available!

Update

So I was listening to the Genealogy Guys and George mentioned that his New Years resolution was to organize his paper files. Which he did. Now I have been working on organizing computer stuff into Bento but my paper files are so not well organized. Or I should say, they are in folders but I really do not have any idea what I have. So I not only need to reorganize the papers so that I know what I have, I also need to scan and update my Bento file so that they are linked to each person. So I decide to start redoing my files. I have been pulling all the files apart and adding to Bento. I did find I have a lot of stuff I printed off the internet so that means I need to go back and digitally link to my computer rather than all the paper. Serious amount of work.

But I did add some obituaries to my files and this is one of the ones I found. This is the woman in the picture from the last posting I did!

Genealogy Update

I have a bunch of files in a folder on my desktop that I need to sort through and add to Bento/iFamily. There is a mix of things from both sides of the family. I know there are census records and some military and a couple immigration records. I know in the long run this will be great but it really is time consuming to organize!

Genealogy

Although this blog hasn't had much content on my family history, I might start. This is kind of a test run. (The picture is of me with some of the kittens taken in the 70's.)

I am currently focusing on organizing my genealogy materials since I hadn't been very good about that up to this point. I am using my lovely MacBookPro along with iFamily for Lepoard and Bento. Of course I haven't even started on my drawer full of files. What I have been doing is locating census records and sending a digital copy to my computer for transcribing into Bento, among other records. I have created a number of "Libraries" on Bento which are connected to a main listing of people in my tree. I love Bento since I can link files and add pictures etc. I would love to show this to people so if you know me, ask and I will bore you for hours!