Fancy Friday - about organization

When you are starting out to research, one thing you should do first and while going forward, is to be consistent.  Always type names the same way, dates the same way and get organized.

• Names:  In most programs you can pick  the style and it will fix it all for you - to a point.  Choose first middle last or last first middle.  You need to decide how you will write out nicknames as well.   I write like mine like this:
• James Patrick "Rick" Smith - Some records has his legal name and some could show his nick name "Rick" - so I put it in quotes.  
• Make sure you handle Jr. Sr. and II or III the same too. Make sure your program does take the Jr or Sr as their last name when it puts it in the search boxes.  Some programs require comas James Patrick Smith, Jr. Just check with what your program requires.
• When you get to royalty or areas where last names are based on areas they are  located you should chose a style.  You can use all capitals for it to stand out in the search boxes.  King James de ENGLAND is an example. 
• When you have a member that has immigrated and changed their name but you want to include both names in the main search engine, choose a style and keep consistent.  Example would be Niilo Kaappola Altonen. Kaappola was his last name in Finland, but Altonen was his last name in America. 
• Dates:  You can write them as Day Month Year or Month Day Year.  Your program sometimes will have you choose and will do it automatically to be consistent.  

When you choose a program, make sure you set up all your tools and settings so you can stay consistent right from the beginning.  

You will need to set up folders on your computer to store all the documents and downloads that you find. You will want to make sure you keep your folders set up the same.  Keep it simple so you can retrieve items when you need to find them again. I can tell you from experience that I have had to reorganize many times. I use to keep all census info in one folder and all birth items in  a folder;  however if I got a call from someone wanting something on a family name, I'd have to go into all the folders to find the stuff, instead of one place. That is why I reorganized to this system below.

Genealogy>FAMILY NAME> then sub-folders under each family name

• Census
• Letters, emails and Articles
• Documents
• Birth
• Death and Obits
• Marriage
• Military
• Immigration
• Photos

This should be done for each main family name in  your tree. Now sometimes you may not have alot on a particular family so you can combine two names that are connected to each other.  

I listed Photos, however you may want to keep separate folders in your PICTURES file. That is where I keep my photos but still by family names.  

Last but not least, remember to back up your stuff. Use a large USB, external hard drive, Cloud  service storage or website that has storage.  I actually have a USB that I carry with the files in my purse, I have an external hard drive incase my computer crashes and I have a website that has storage.  Everyone will chose something that suits their needs, there are so many options!