Genealogy 101, Part 2

And firstly Good Morning to Mrs Tiggywinkle.

Storing the Data

The data exists either in paper format, in digital format, or both (in fact I am hoping to have digital copies of all the paper documents, over time).

Paper Documents should be stored in the Archive box, in the folder for the associated family, and in the generation where it is relevant.

The digital data is stored in a number of places:

• Doculib
• Photolib
• Family
• Web site

Document Library

This library (stored in /Public/Doculib ) contains digital images of certificates, letters, and documents of all kinds related to the family.

To make some sort of sense and simplify the location of the documents, the following standards have been adopted for naming the images

YYYY-TT-MMM (ref) Name(s); comment

Table 1 below shows the definition of these components.

Table 1 Naming Format for Document Library

YYYY	Is the year of the event or the document
TT	Is the document type where:
	A	Admon (Probate, Wills and Admons)
	B	Birth
	M	Marriage
	D	Death
	DV	Divorce
	C	Christening/Baptism
	CN	Census Entry
	I	Interment
	G	Grave
	P	Press report
	PL	Passenger List
	O	Obituary
	L	Letter or Invitation
	R	Remembrance Card
	S	Order of Service
	TD	Trade Directory or Telephone Directory
MMM	Is the month of the event
(ref)	Is the official index reference for the document, if known
Names(s)	Is the name or names of the subject(s) or author
Comment	Any relevant explanatory comment

Figure 1, shows a clipping from the Doculib folder, and clearly demonstrates the use of the naming conventions. You can immediately see how it makes the location and retrieval of information very easy.

Figure 1 Example of the Doculib library and use of naming conventions

Backup

The basic document storage is backed up as follows

• Public/Doculib (on the 1TB WD NAS MyBook) is backed up to /Public/Doculib_Backup (on the second 2TB NAS WDNAS2TB), and  
• it is separately backed up to J:\Google Drive\Backups\Doculib which is uploaded to the Google Drive on the web.

Photo Library

The photos, discussed above, are stored in /Public/Photolib (on the 1TB WD NAS MyBook)

The Picasa controls and index are stored in c:\Users\Andy\AppData\Local\Google\Picasa2

Backup

The basic photo storage is backed up as follows:

• /Public/Photolib (on the 1TB WD NAS MyBook ) is periodically copied to
• /Public/Photolib_Backup (on the second 2TB NAS WDNAS2TB) Individual folders in the Picasa library are replicated to Google+ albums on the web.

The Picasa control files are similarly copied to a second drive, and to the web storage in Google drive

Family Library

Other information is stored in the j:\family folder on the PC – most significantly this stores the database used by “Family Tree Maker” and which is, essentially, the master database for all of the genealogical information.

The folder also contains sub folder for each of the primary family groups:

Brian

Roe

Gorse Fox

Taylor

And in turn these have sub-folders for the next generation of families.

Backup

The basic genealogy storage is backed up as follows

• j:\family library (on the PC) is backed up up J:\Google Drive\Backups\family which is uploaded to the Google Drive on the web

Tooling

Managing all of genealogical information requires the use of various tools. The primary tools used on the local machines are discussed below.

Family Tree Maker

This is a Windows program, so runs on the PC. This manages and maintains the genealogical database.

Picasa

Discussed above, manages the digital photo library. Again this is on the PC, at the time of writing.

Excel

Is used to manage individual facts (factoids) gleaned from various documents. For example, the file currently contains over 900 entries and allows me to see:

• What documents I have that refer to a particular individual,
• What documents I have for a particular family,
• Where people lived over time

and so forth. This has proved immensely useful when cross-checking facts. (And of course, every entry cites the source and in most cases links to the image in the Document library discussed above.