Relatively Speaking, Organizing Your Data Base Photos

Copyright 2010, CABS for Reflections From the Fence

Recently, Diane (our non-blogging Wild One) and I chatted a few minutes about organizing photos or scanned documents you want to link to your data base. This is not a high priority in Diane’s research life, so she has not really done much. On the other hand, I, have, mmmm, almost afraid to type this number, almost 7, 750 multimedia (photos, videos, documents, maps, sound bites, etc.) attached to individuals on my data base (maintained by RootsMagic 3.x). Anne and Karen have many more than I do, linking wild one ladies!

There is no doubt you need an organization plan, you need to be able to find those photos. Here is my master plan.

Photos are NOT buried inside the RM program on my hard drive, they are instead, stored in a separate directory, mine is called, “Family History Photos”. Isn’t that original?? LOL

Within that directory there are many, 54 to be exact, subdirectories. Most are named for the surnames I am researching, Trumbo, Halterman, Lashbrook, Gehrke, Fenton, Eley, etc. There are also directories for special needs, such as Heirloom and special stuff, where I store photos of heirlooms and other special stuff we own; Lihue Lutheran Church records, for scans of records from that church, this file contains 91 scans. I have several files named “Places cemeteries and stuff” (1, 2 and 3), these contain maps, photos of gates at cemeteries, photos of houses.

I have found that I prefer not to have a lot of photos in one directory. I used to let the files grow and grow, and have one that has over 700 photos in it. TOOOOOO many! I am happier with 200, but that is a personal preference.

Remember, organize the way your logic works, and what works for me may not work for you.  The challenge is that you need to be able to find the files.  Have fun, organization is a great thing!

*Graphic courtesy of clker.com

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