A little Humor & a bit of Truth

Oh if it were only that easy! Sometimes I look at my research and I think "Wow! This is all so overwhelming and am I ever going to see an end to it all?". Then I shake myself and say "Surely not, where would all the fun go?".  Truth is, I enjoy what I do. I love learning about my past and about my ancestors. I feel that through my work they live on. I am keeping them alive. I am telling their stories.

Those thoughts bring me to another topic, organization of all that Genealogical information. How do you keep it all organized? What works for you? I have only recently began trying to develop some sort of organization with everything that I have thus far. One of the main things I have done is to create a master folder on my desktop and I labeled it Genealogy Master File. In that file, I have created sub folders titled: Death Records, Military Records, Marriage Records....etc. Within each of those folders I have further divided them by State. Then as they develop I will likely organize them by Counties and so forth. It helps to do it this way rather than to organize them by surname. Because if I know what area a particular ancestor is from, then I know that I am likely going to be able to find what I need in that sub folder. I keep a copy of this on my desktop. I thought in advance about the possibility of a computer crash so I have uploaded a copy online to my Google Storage account. I plan on also burning a copy to a DVD or CD so that I have access to it at sometime in the future. That brings me to my main point overall. When you work as hard as I do at gathering information, nobody wants to take a chance on loosing it. As they say "Stuff happens". So be prepared in advance, store it several places so that if one place has problems and your information is gone, you have it stored elsewhere and need not worry about loosing everything that is so important and vital to your work.