You will spend many hours researching your family and many hours recording your findings. Your computer is a wonderful tool and genealogy programmes take a lot of the drudgery out of sorting out where to keep your findings.
Computers are a fabulous tool with one fault - they break down.
A break down can, if catastrophic, result in the loss of all your hard work. Don't think it can't happen to you. Are you 100% sure that your computer hard drive will never fail?
Over the past 20 years I have had two hard drive failures resulting in the total loss of all the data on those drives. Fortunately I did not lose my family tree data which had taken several thousand to compile. I had BACKED UP my data on to another hard drive.
Lucky, NO - careful, YES.
Your family tree data consists of:
* Data - Information you have entered into your computer programme such as names, birth, marriage and death dates, events and personal notes you have made on individuals.
* Photographs/Document Images etc (Multimedia). All good genealogy programmes allow you to attach images to individuals
Your computer programme has the facility at the touch of a button to back up your entire family file(s) and you should use it regularly - both data & multimedia.
DATA
A backup should be completed at the end of every session, if not more often. If you are entering lots of data in one session then it is not a bad idea to do a quick backup during the session - it only takes a minute or two.
DO NOT BACKUP YOUR DATA (OR MULTIMEDIA) ONTO THE SAME HARD DRIVE WHERE YOUR COMPUTER PROGRAMME IS HELD. IF YOU ONLY HAVE ONE HARD DRIVE THEN MAKE A BACKUP ONTO ANOTHER STORAGE DEVICE - EG. CD/ DVD, USB KEY ETC.
You can even backup your data/multimedia onto one of the many free web storage hosts such as the free BackUpMyTree. You can also use one of the free sychronising storage web sites, such as SugarSync or Dropbox. Both SugarSync and Dropbox offer remote storage in addition to the ability to sychronise information automatically.
NOTE: A BACKUP OF A DATA FILE IS DIFFERENT FROM A GEDCOM FILE. A GEDCOM FILE CONTAINS A PRE-SET NUMBER OF ITEMS FROM YOUR FAMILY TREE - IT DOES NOT CONTAIN ALL YOUR INFORMATION. A BACKUP DATA FILE DOES CONTAIN ALL YOUR INFORMATION.
PHOTOGRAPHS & DOCUMENT IMAGES ETC. (MULTIMEDIA)
Photographs substantially enhance a family tree.
If you intend to keep your tree in a genealogy programme on your computer then you should consider digitising your paper photographs/document images as well. Inevtiably you will come across images you want to add to your tree on the internet - these images are already digitised and can be added to your tree very easily.
At some time you will also correspond with other family tree researchers and want to exchange photos. Exchanging emails with a digital image attached is a fast and safe way to do this.
So, once you have a stack of images what do you do with them? Heap them all into one folder on your computer or store them methodically? When you start out you may only have a few images but as you progress your tree the number of images you have will increase. A systematic approach to handling your images should be adopted.
Naming the File. You could easily give your images a sequential file name - say 1,2,3 4 and so on, but as your images multiply you will not be able to identity the image from just the file name.
Giving your files meaningful file names will greatly assist your in easily identifying an image from just the filename. eg
This photograph's filename is:
Dora Manning holding Ray Watkins_Alicia Watkins_ Myrtle Watkins holding Billy Moss_William (Allan) Watkins.jpg
The filename says it all, so anyone whom I send this image to will instantly know who the individuals in the photo are. The only thing that is missing is an attribution to who gave me the photo (courtesy of ........). There is none because the photo is mine.
ALL YOUR IMAGES SHOULD EASILY IDENTIFY THE SUBJECT MATTER FROM THE FILENAME
Storing Your Image Files. Most good genealogy programmes pre-allocate a folder for the storage of images. In Legacy the folder is named 'Pictures'.
Pictures (images) can be stored wherever you like, but to make locating a particular image on your hard drive as easy as possible at a later date you might like to use a system I have found useful;
Keep all your pictures in a folder called 'Pictures'
Create a (sub) folder for each indivudual who is the subject of an image. Use the full name of the individual plus their birth year - eg. Russell Ray Watkins 1916. The birth year is added to avoid confusion where several male generations use the same name.
The folder structure will look like this: c:/Legacy/Pictures/Russell Ray Watkins 1916/
Where images contain more than one individual in your tree you can either copy the image to a folder for each individual (very time consuming) or just nominate one person. (If you have used the filename regime shown above a search of the file(s) will quickly locate an individual shown on an image stored in another person's name).
BACKING UP YOUR IMAGES (MULTIMEDIA) IS JUST AS IMPORTANT AS BACKING UP YOUR DATA. FOLLOW THE SAME PROCEDURES SET OUT ABOVE FOR BACKING UP DATA.
EMAILS
Emails are an essential toll for any family historian using the internet. Most of your contacts will be made via email.
You will undoubtedly send and receive photographs and images of documents as attachments to emails.
The contacts you make with fellow family historians via email are a significant part of your research data and you should treat the emails and the contact information the same as you do for your family tree data and images. They need to be stored and backed up regularly.
I store all my family tree emails in a separate folder called 'genealogy'. Whatever email programme you use (I use Mozilla Thunderbird) it is very easy to create a new folder to store all you family tree emails in.
You should also store all your family tree contact details in your email address book. I also add an extra bit - I list the family names that person is interest in so that it shows when I look them up in my address book.
REMEMBER - BACKUP BACKUP BACKUP BACKUP BACKUP
IT WILL HAPPEN TO YOU!