After a recent hard drive corruption I lost all my work, family history and everythign else on my machine. It was a semi blessing in disguise really as I wanted to sort out my stuff anyway!
So, I am now at a stage where I will be re-scanning and redoing my tree in its entirity, so I am just wondering what your tips are for good housekeeping?
I.e. Do I keep all scanned certificats in Birth / Marriage folders etc, or is it easier to keep them all in family name, i.e. Smith > Birth Certs etc?
Any other tips much appreciated.
Lee
The past is a foreign country, how can we go there ...
I kept the structure when I moved my gedcom to a V4 project.
The problem I see with using family folders, is at least with my village familes a single census page may have 2 or three of my families on and Marriages may well between two core families.
Jane (admin)
"Knowledge is knowing that a tomato is a fruit. Wisdom is not putting it in a fruit salad."
I keep Baptisms, Church Marriage register entries and Burials in separate folders in a folder called BMB. Birth certificates, civil marriage certificates and death certificates I keep in separate folders in a folder called GRO. Census records are kept in separate year folders in a Census folder. I have separate folders for individuals for miscellaneous documents and there are other folders for things like trial records, military service records, wills, monumental inscriptions etc.
My set up is very similar to Gerry's except that I have split the data in to Paternal and Maternal folders for BMD, Parish and Census files. Pictures, Will's, Trials and co. are kept in common folders.
BTW, I'm only tracing my tree, my Partner's is being done by her daughter.
I have a single folder called sources under the FH media folder. My file naming convention then distinguishes what's what.
For example, my maternal grandfather's birth certificate image is bir-1884-08-20-james-duncan-forbes.tif The FH multimedia record has exactly the same name and the short form of the source record is also the same (except that I use spaces instead of hyphens and capitalise the name).
Marriages and deaths begin with mar- and dea-; census images begin with cen-, and so on. Old parish records go in as opr-bir- and so on.
The prefix for the filename coupled with the date in ISO order means that the folder is automatically sorted by document type and date just by sorting alphabetically. The same is also true of the source records list in FH.
It also means I don't need to create a new folder for odd source types that I have only one of, such as Commonwealth War Graves Commission records.
Very computerish and geeky, but computerish and geeky works for me!
The only thing I'd add to the above is that I actually have 2 sets of folders, one for the stuff that has been recorded in FH, the other for what hasn't been put in yet. That way I can see what I still need to do. (I'm prone to capturing census images off Ancestry for someone and their family in one great swoop before entering anything into FH). When it's entered, then I move it over before linking to the source record in FH.
Thus I have ....\Media\Sources1NotInFH and ....\Media\Sources2InFH
The same hierarchy then sits underneath - e.g. \Census, \Certs, etc.
Just to add to the previous posts, here are my naming conventions. I use a set of Windows Folders within the FH Project Media Folder in a similar way to the earlier posts. The choice of Folders is somewhat personal, and can be changed at a later date with the help of FH > Tools > Work with External File Links. My naming convention is designed so that Media Files, Multimedia Records, and Source Records are sorted in a similar sequence to the Family Historian Individual Records list.
I name Individual multimedia linked files using the following formats:-
Where {SURNAME}, {Forename(s)} is the individual person of interest. Where {Year} is 4 digits, {Month} is 2 digits, and {Day} is 2 digits (alternatively {Year}-{Year} is used). Where {Quarter} is either Q1, Q2, Q3, Q4, or a 3 letter month name {Mmm}. Where {Event} is Birth, Baptism, Christen, Marriage, Divorce, Death, Cremation, Burial, Obituary, Will, Probate, Letter, etc. Where {Repository} is Ancestry, FamilySearch, FindMyPast, FreeBMD, etc.
I name Census multimedia linked files as follows:-
Where {Piece} is 4 digits, {Book}-{Folio} is 2-2 digits, {Folio} is 3 digits, and {Page} is 2 digits. Where {PN}=Piece No., {RD}=Reg District, {SD}=Sub District, {ED}=Enum District {SN}=Schedule No. Where RG78{PN} (enumerator’s piece number) is omitted in overseas military returns. Where {SURNAME}, {Forename(s)} is usually the Head of household (or main person of interest). Where {Repository} is Ancestry, FamilySearch, FindMyPast, FreeCEN, etc.
Multimedia Record Title formats are as above except for omitting the {File Type} (e.g. jpg, doc, ...).
Source Record Title formats are similar but omit the -{Month}-{Day}, {Repository} & {File Type}. These also set {SURNAME} to {MARRIED-NAME} nee {MAIDEN-NAME} for married women, and {NEW-NAME} aka {OLD-NAME} for individuals who have changed their name. This extends to {2ND-MARRIED-NAME} aka {1ST-MARRIED-NAME} nee {MAIDEN-NAME} for women married twice.
Hope this is of use.
Mike Tate
Mike Tate is researching the TATE and SCOTT family tree and all relations.
I'm impressed at the thoroughness of Mike's naming convention. Mine evolved rather than being properly worked out from the beginning. I've deliberately kept mine (relatively) simple to cut down on the amount of typing when I hit the save button on image files.
For censuses, I adopt a very basic format of something like:
cen-1881-levi-mardle.jpg
where the name used is generally the head of the household.
The other stats such as piece, folio and page go in the notes field of the source record. (My source record, multimedia record and image file all have essentially the same name as described in my previous post.)
Arguably this approach is TOO minimal as it doesn't handle two cases well. One is duplicate names across generations. I solve this by appending a year of birth:
I don't have too many cases like that so I can get away with it.
The other case that my convention doesn't handle well is where a census entry is guttered over 2 or more pages. I handle this by naming the images thus:
There are correspondingly two multimedia records to deal with these but only one source record which references both multimedia records.
For convenience, on the couple of occasions that I have two families, both of whom are in the family tree and both appearing on the same census page, I simply have two copies of that image with different names.
As ever, this is what works for me and doesn't necessarily work for anyone else.
Ian
(In case anyone is wondering about my curious aversion to spaces in filenames, it's a habit from work, where we quite often use one-off perl scripts to manipulate the contents of files, and it's generally much easier if we KNOW that there are never spaces in filenames.)
One question though, wouldn't your census filenames be better served by having surnames first, thus making autosort a bit more logical, i.e. by years, then, surnames?
The past is a foreign country, how can we go there ...
As others have suggested I use various sub folders for different document types. For my census folder I have sub folders for each census year. I use my own Ancestral Sources (and before that Gedcom Census) which is intelligent enough to remember which folder to use for each of the different census years. I allow A.S. (and G.C. before it) to automatically rename images for me based on the source title of the census which follows a template (configured within A.S options) so images end up being named something like:
Census 1891 Warrington, Lancashire, England RG13_3583_11 (Alfred Hough)
where the name in brackets is the head of household or person I'm particularly interested in (e.g. if my ancestor was a servant in the household).
To be honest, for me the actual file name is relatively unimportant as the images are accessed from within Family Historian anyway where you don't even need to see the filename of the images unless you really want to.
When future versions of Ancestral Sources support other source documents (baptisms, marriages, birth certificates, etc.) then it will be possible to have templates for those too so again you can just leave A.S. to name the files for you if you wish.
Nick Walker Ancestral Sources & Gedcom Census Developer
I forgot to mention that I use A.S. (and G.C. before) to auto-name the Multimedia Census Records from their File-names, and hope to continue with other event types as they are added to A.S. Thank you Nick for this excellent add-on for FH.
Mike Tate is researching the TATE and SCOTT family tree and all relations.
Quite right Lee, surname then given names would sort my census images better. As I explained, my system evolved rather than being worked out properly in advance and I really can't be bothered with redoing it (and renaming the corresponding multimedia and source records)!
For certificate images and GRO index images, it doesn't really make that much difference as the type and date pretty much fix the ordering. I have surprisingly few duplicate dates even for quarter dates.
....which has to some extent caused me trouble. By the time a file with a fairly long filemane, such as an 1841 Census (as taken directly from Ancestry eg 1841 England Census Class HO107; Piece 515; Book 6; Civil Parish Ormskirk; County Lancashire; Enumeration District 1; Folio 9; Page 11; GSU roll 306902 - and not a cut down forward-slashed version of the name) reaches the end of the file path from C:/ to My Documents/Family History/MyFile.GED/Census/UK1841 or similar, the length of the file name is 'too long' (for my Windows XP system) and the PC automatically reduces the filename until it can fit, but making it of no value at all. I worked around this by having a separate external hard drive (HDD) where all my FH work, folders and Files are stored and a second external HDD that (using approriate software) the Data on the first HDD is continually 'syncronised' to, thus creating a permanent and ongoing backup. Has anyone else found the long filename situation a problem? My solution is OK because I use my home-built desktop PC but two or even one external HDD might be difficult for someone who is ultra-mobile with a laptop...!?
Long filename problems seem to pop up in all sorts of places - including some versions of my back-up software, which is somewhat disconcerting.
The only thing, I'm afraid, is to try and review those long names (if I understand you correctly). For instance in: 1841 England Census Class HO107; Piece 515; Book 6; Civil Parish Ormskirk; County Lancashire; Enumeration District 1; Folio 9; Page 11; GSU roll 306902 one can be a bit ruthless. GSU roll 306902 is just the film reference of the Gen Soc Utah. It doesn't identify the image, so trim it off. As I recollect, 1841 England Census Class HO107; Piece 515; Book 6; Folio 9; Page 11; suffices to define the image. There is no need to have the parish, or county because one can't have the above details with a different parish or county. The ED is similar and was the identification used when the census was created, not by TNA when archiving the census.
IT people like me always try to name something by a key and not add anything else in. For instance, to take another example, one could name a photo "Avro Lancaster RAF PA474 005", which is the 5th photo I have of the RAF's Avro Lancaster PA474. But since the RAF only ever had one PA474, it is perfectly possible to name the photo "RAF PA474 005". This is the same principle as trimming those extraneous bits out of the filename above. The issue with trimming is whether you lose ease of use - e.g. can you still recognise PA474 as a Lanc when you see the picture?
Of course, changing anything could cause you more disruption than it's worth...
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How do you organise sources on your PC
