How do you organize computer folders for your records?

Question

My brother just gifted me with another batch of computer files. Some are images from church books from an online database of books. Some are translations of these images. I've got a few hundred such files now and there will be hopefully many more. How do you organize such files into folders so that records are easy to find yet no one folder has an overwhelming number of files?

Also, where do you put the records of an ancestor's siblings? Do you put them with this ancestor, with their common parents, or create folders of their own (at the risk of lots of folders)?

Answer 1

I would make a folder structure parallel to the family tree structure ... in other words, a folder for the farthest back male ancestor and spouse, then subfolders of that for each of their children (with spouses sharing the same folder together) and subfolders of each of these for their children, etc.  The problem I can see with this is where to put a document that is relevant to more than 1 person - i.e., a census record would document all members of the household, unless you want to duplicate the document file and put it in each appropriate folder.

I'm not at all concerned by having lots of folders - it keeps things well organized and you can see which records belong to which persons, which is much better than having a single folder containing records for several people (no matter how you decide to group them), which would not be immediately apparent which person(s) each record is relevant to.

Comments

Do you have a naming convention for your folders?

---

If you just use the person's name then it is likely that multiple family members (parents and children or cousins) have the same name, which would make the folders confusing.  To make sure the folders have unique names, if the profiles are all on WikiTree, use their WikiTree ID or you could use name plus birth year ... or any other scheme that would make sure to identify the folders in a way that is meaningful to you.

---

By the way, Paul, this is not how I organize my document files.  I have a database to store my genealogy data and I have a table for data about each person and another table for documents.  A third table has the id of a person and the id of a source file so that each record relates a person to a source.  There are multiple records for a person in this table to relate all the sources relevant for that person.  Because my database organizes all the information, I have no need for a folder structure to do it - I store all my record files in a single folder named  "sources".

My database is one that I created for this purpose - it is not a genealogy program that you could download from somewhere to use.  My database has all the functionality I need, but is not at all what could be described as user friendly - I'm computer friendly, so I never bothered to add programming to make it user friendly.

Answer 2

My tip is to come up with a file and folder naming convention. This will help you find the documents more easily and will keep things organized.

Answer 3

I just answered this and my answer dissapeared, oh well it was a bit long winded!  So trying again.

My structure is via Database,  Surname with subfolders for individuals.  (I have a few genealogy databases hubby, me and a couple of others.)

File structure from my PC "Genedata/Individuals_Surnames/Direct_database_surnames/Hill/Hill_Henry_RIN_503"

(I use underscores old programmer habit)

RIN is from my database could use Birth or Death dates or WikiTreeID.

I did watch a video called "Mastering Digital Filing for Genealogists"  at https://familytreewebinars.com (pay for view).    Matched my methodology - Yay!

Answer 4

If the file relates to a single family, I tend to put it in the folder for a member of that family (usually the head of the family) and then create a shortcut to it from the folders for other family members.

If it relates to more than one family, I would probably put it in a 'resources' folder - possibly have more than one such folder for different types/dates of resources - again with shortcuts from individual folders.