Too Many BSOs!!!

Thomas MacEntee warns genealogists, especially those doing the Genealogy Do-Over to avoid being sidetracked by BSOs – Bright Shiny Objects.  We need to keep focused. 

I was doing ok for a couple of weeks.  I worked on my file naming strategy for documents and digitized photos. So far it seems to be working well. I have an Excel spreadsheet as an indexer of the photo files. As I prepare my scanned photos, I’ve been including metadata and a watermark of sorts - the three initials as shown in the lower left of the photo below.  I try to make the watermark fairly unobtrusive but definitely visible.

Then I was besieged with BSOs. On February 7 I attended an all day seminar put on by three Treasure Coast (Florida) genealogy societies.  This is an annual affair hosted by the Indian River Genealogical Society.  They’re always good but this one was GREAT.

Lisa Louise Cooke presented four classes from her book: The Genealogist’s Google Toolbox   I knew that Google had more features than I’ve been using, but I was blown away by her presentation and her demonstrations of the powerful Google tools that can take online research to another dimension.  If you’re not watching her website, podcasts and videos, go take a look at Genealogy Gems

How can you not go home with a treasure trove of BSOs – new tools – and not play with them all?

Then on February 10, at the monthly Indian RiverGenealogical Society meeting, Mark Fearer spoke on the topic of immigration.  He gave me some ideas that may help with my one remaining immigration brick wall.  A couple more BSOs to play with.

I love new toys.  Self discipline has never been my strong point.  There are just too darn many BSOs.

Focus! Focus! Focus.

Looking for Feedback on File Naming Schemes

I think that I’ve come up with a workable (for me) scheme for naming document files, and another one for photo files. But there a still a couple of unresolved questions. Please comment.  I know I can’t have considered everything.

Document Files = Date_Who_What

Date	YYYY_MM_DD  A lower case x will substitute for unknown entries: 195x_xx_xx
Who	Surname-first name; or just family name
What	Type of record: Birth, Baptism, Marriage, Census, Deed, etc.

Here’s an example:  A copy of the church record of baptism from an LDS microfilm.

File name: 1841_11_14_Dachtera-Andreas_Baptism.jpg

The LDS film number is in the file metadata.

The idea is that the file list will sort itself first on date, then on name, but I haven’t gotten far enough to see what happens when there are Xs in the date. I suppose that a year of 184x will be listed after those with 1849 as the year.

While this seems that it will do the job, it seems just too simple.  Have I forgotten something???

Photo naming gets a little more complex

Date_Who_What-Description(description optional)_ Generation

Date	YYYY_MM_DD  A lower case x will substitute for unknown entries: 195x_xx_xx
Who	Surname-First name; or just Family name plus additional information where appropriate
What	Type of photo i.e. snapshot or portrait Optional description can include the event
Generation	Gx where x = the generation number.

Generation is one of the things I’ve wrestled with.  Here’s what I came up with.

Generation

Zero (Z) = me and my siblings, first cousins, etc.

1 = my parents and their siblings, etc,

2 = grandparents

3 = great grandparents

Z1 = my children

Z2 = my grandchildren

Z3 = my great grandchildren

M  = a photo with more than two generations.

A couple of examples:

File name:  191x_xx_xx_Dachtera-Stanley-kids_snap_g2-1

This tells me that it is a snapshot of my grandfather with kids, and that the primary person is generation 2 but it also includes generation 1 people.

Identifying the photo with Stanley’s name is my choice for my reasons. It could well have been “Dachtera-Johanna-sibs-dad”

File name: 1920_05_04_Dachtera-Supinski_port-wed_g1

I’m not sure how I should identify married women.

Use the married name?  In terms of one aspect of “future proofing” succeeding generations are more likely to know only the married name and may be looking at photo files independently of genealogy data files.

Use both maiden and married names? This may be the best solution, but would I identify the bride above as “Supinski-Johanna-Dachtera” or some other combination?

I’ve tried to keep this as simple as possible but maybe I’m missing something important.  I’ll resume scanning photos and see where I run into snags.

Any suggestions for improvement will be welcome.

Learning from the Genealogy Do-Over

The Genealogy Do-Over is a thirteen week project begun on January 1 of this year and  led by Thomas MacEntee.  Information can be found online in several places that will be listed below. I’ve learned so very much from the participants in the Facebook group (more than 3,000 of them) devoted to this project who post and answer questions; and share the files they’ve created or modified to improve their research and recording techniques.

Digital file archiving is one problem I have not resolved to my satisfaction. My “system” has simply evolved from what seemed practical when I first began family research.  In other words, it is a non-system with some inconsistencies that make it a bit of a mess.  A specific problem area is file names for photographs.

At one time I started to design a file naming structure and a Microsoft Access database. Ill health took me away from genealogy for a while and when I got back to it I saw that my photo file naming scheme was entirely too complex to be usable.  I also came to realize that My database would become obsolete as Microsoft Access software changed and priced itself out of my budget. Consequently, I haven’t done any more scanning without having a reasonable naming scheme.

Thanks to the Do-Over folks, I’ve found a few archiving methods that may suit my needs.  I will probably take ideas from more than one suggested method. When I figure it out, I’ll post it.

In the meantime, I continue to follow the Do-Over and absorb the knowledge that these folks are sharing. I’m grateful to them all.

Here are some links to Do-Over information

http://www.geneabloggers.com/tag/genealogy-do-over/

https://www.facebook.com/groups/genealogydoover/

Join the group and take a look at the files that have been uploaded as well as reading the posts.

http://www.bagtheweb.com/u/genealogydo-over

There’s a link here to blog posts made by participants and links to resources.

http://www.pinterest.com/geneabloggers/genealogy-do-overtm/