Having an organizational system for your genealogy helps prevent it from becoming a mess of information. There are different ways to organize things; each person has one way or another that works for them. Just because something works for my brain doesn’t mean you have to implement that system.
I find myself having to rethink my document organization system for my client projects. I mainly need to give my clients their document files along with the corresponding citations. I’ve worked for companies that compile documents into a single Word or PowerPoint file. Some of these companies would print everything for the client. One company numbers the documents. They all put the citations with the document images.
My personal preference for document files is to have each one as an image file on the computer, allowing me to zoom in and out as needed. I did not like how much time was spent compiling all the files with citations and document numbers. Renumbering the documents was especially unpleasant. No matter what system I use, I would be setting everything up on billable time for the project. I would rather spend that time researching. However, the files need to be understandable and usable to my clients.
I’m bartering services with a friend. For some reason, I thought that doing a 100-hour project of “research everything” was a good idea. Two years later and 50+ hours in, I’m realizing what a mess the project has become. I told my friend I needed to write a report of what I’ve found thus far and stick to 10-hour projects. The document file is massive, and it’s the main reason I’m rethinking how I organize my documents for client projects.
For my personal genealogy, I have folders for each ancestral family. I save these files by [husband’s surname]-[wife’s surname], [husband’s first name] & [wife’s first name]. I even have files saved in that manner for myself and my parents. In each folder, I have my research logs, documents, notes, etc.
I have a group of personal genealogy projects that I treat like client projects. Many of these will be used as case studies for magazine or blog articles. A few of them will be used for lineage society applications.
For my client projects, I have a folder for each client, named [client surname], [client first name]. For repeat clients, I have a sub-folder for research from old projects. I also have a subfolder for documents I found, which is further organized by documents they sent me and documents from prior projects.
I have a setting in Google Chrome that prompts me to select a folder to save something in when I download anything online. This allows me to place the item in the appropriate folder for the project I’m working on and assign it a name that indicates its record type, such as YYYY_[ancestor’s name]_[record]. By putting the year first, all documents in the same folder are automatically sorted in chronological order.