Genealogy Research Organization is Critical

Who - What - Where - When
And Sometimes Why

You need a great genealogy research organization plan and here is help to do it!

The genealogy research organization of all the material you have accumulated for your family trees will sometimes be the biggest challenge you face in your genealogy projects. Finding what you need when you need it is very much about the where!

Here are some hints to help you keep order and some pointers of things to avoid.

It is a big chore to keep all the papers, letters, photos, digital images, census pages, and all the other untold pieces of information about each and every member of your family in such a manner that you can find any given page or file when you need that particular one.

Be Smart - Be Organized!

If you don't use some type of commercially available family tree program on your computer, you should start to do so. There are several good ones to choose from and they all make it easier for you to control all your research results.

For more on genealogy software

You need to make copies of all the information you find. This can be more complicated than it seems because your information is in so many different forms - paper, digital files, audio recordings, video, and so on.

There are many different ways to preserve your information

This is but the first step. When you have all these preserved records, you need to have some plan for filing them in a manner that allows you to find them again when you are looking for a specific page or file.

How will you keep track of where you are in your research? What have you done? Where is it? What still needs to be done? Without using forms the chances are you will lose track of where you are and what you need to do still. Even worse, sometimes you will lose track of the research data you have already collected.

For more on using forms for genealogy research organization

You will accumulate massive amounts of paper as you pursue your family tree research. Somehow you will have to file it. There are several ways of handling all that paper. Set up a plan for it early and stick to it. Otherwise, you will have stacks of paper everywhere.

Since so many more of you use computers, digital cameras, and all other sorts of recording devices these days to research your family trees, you also have more opportunity to save all kinds of digital files on your computer hard drives.

How do you handle all the digital records you have saved?

And now, the biggie!

The last, but in some ways the most important, issue in your genealogy research organization is backing up all that genealogy research you have saved on your computer. If your computer fails, you do not want it to be the only copy of your hard work!

For more on computer backups.

If you are going to remain on top of the results you find in your genealogy researching, take it slowly, develop a good genealogy research organization plan for you, and then follow it faithfully.

I know I have that - I just can't lay my hands on it! - Where did I put it?

Did I Remind You To Be Organized?