TRACKING LIVES WITH TECHNOLOGY
©2021 by Donald R. Snow -- Page last updated 2021-12-09
Return to the Utah
Valley Technology and Genealogy Group Home Page or Don's Class
Listings Page .
ABSTRACT: An old proverb says, "When a person dies, an entire
library is lost." If a person doesn't leave accessible information about their life, their descendants in about two generations will know almost nothing about them. Technology can be a major help in keeping track of what has happened in your
own or a relative's life. This class will show how to find and label items such as documents, articles, news clippings, etc., so they become searbhable and appear in chronological order automatically for each person. With this file naming system items jump to where they belong without you having to move them there. The class notes for this presentation and related information in other articles, all with
active links, are posted at
https://uvtagg.org/classes/dons/dons-classes.html
.
WELCOME AND INTRODUCTION TO CLASS
- Instructor is Donald R. Snow ( snowd@math.byu.edu
) of Provo and St. George, Utah, United States.
- These notes and other related
articles, all with active Internet links, are posted on my website https://uvtagg.org/classes/dons/dons-classes.html
.
- To see these notes in a different language paste the above link into Google > Translate (Go to Google, click on the icon with 3 rows of 3 dots > Translate) > Text; set the languages from English to whatever you want, and click on the URL in the translated box -- you will see all these notes, and anything you click on in them, in the new language, until you enter a new URL in your browser.
- Tips: (1) To put an icon on your desktop for these notes, or any webpage, just drag the icon from in front of the
address in your browser to your desktop. (2) To open a
link from here in another tab, so you keep your place in these notes,
hold down the Control key while clicking the link.
- The problem for this class: How to find, save, and label items so they becme searchable and automatically sort in chronological order for each person.
DOCUMENTS AND ARTICLES
- Types of documents and articles to consider:
- Vital records, indices, articles, and certificates for birth, marriage, death, etc
- Church records and certificates for membership, blessings, baptisms, ordination, Individual Ordinance Summaries, directories, recommends, callings, and missions
- Journals, diaries, appointment books
- School and education, report cards, transcripts,
yearbooks, news, programs
- Programs participated in, sports, plays,
music, speaking, hobbies, vocations, avocations
- Occupation records, city directories, organization directories
- Articles from newspapers, newsletters, magazines, books
- Portraits (but not ordinary snapshots since there may by many and a different naming systems
work better for those)
- Letters, personal, family, missionary, Christmas
- Genealogy, family group sheets, pedigree charts, screenshots
from FamilySearch Family Tree and other genealogy databases
- Miscellaneous -- any other items you can think of; if in doubt,
include it.
- Collecting and organizing documents and articles is a major start in keeping track of a life, your own or a relative's
- Digitizing such collections will be helpful and you need to keep track of where each item came from.
- A digital collection can be updated and reproduced easily, unlike a book, and people, youth in particular, can read it on mobile devices
- Once digitized, items can be reproduced and your hard copy documents are not the only copy in existence, in case of disasters.
- Start by scanning and digitizing documents and artifacts you already possess.
ONLINE SEARCHES FOR DOCUMENTS AND INFORMATION
- Google and other search engines help find information online; be sure to search for various combinations of the name, e.g. "donald * snow" and "don snow"; the Google AROUND command helps too, "donald AROUND(5) snow" (with no quotes) picks up the search terms with up to 5 words between; also check for other search syntax to help in searches
- Use a screenshot program, e.g. FASTSTONE CAPTURE, to make a copy of what you find; FASTSTONE even does scrolling screen windows; the old free version 5.1 is still available, but the newer versions are inexpensive shareware
LABELING FILES
- File names should help you know what's in the file without having to open it
- Here is a system I have developed to do this and so they sorts in chronological order for each person
- If you already have a system that works for you, just use the parts of my system that will help, but be consistent; then later, you can modify whatever you want all at once.
- File names can have up to 255 characters in Windows,
but that includes the path to the file and the 3-character file
extension.
- Example of my file naming system:
ManwaringDiane(Snow)(1934-2012)-2012-10-13-DEATH-NEWS-OBITUARY-SaltLakeDeseretNews--Ancestry-com--2014-04-10.pdf
- Using the woman's maiden name is standard in genealogy and allows
all files pertaining to her to sort together, both before and after marriage
- Including married name in parentheses helps with identification at
a glance and in searching
- Including birth and death years makes time period clear
and distinguishes people with same name, so no need for Jr. or Sr.,
unless that really was part of their name
- Event date after the name and in International Date Format, YYYY-MM-DD,
makes all files for that person sort together chronologically and gives a timeline of their life -- event date put anywhere else or in different format would not sort chronologically
- Event keywords allow finding and sorting by event, but still chronologically; can use as many keywords as you want; some I use are BIRTH, MARRIAGE, DEATH, NEWS, OBITUARY, LDS, DOC, SCHOOL, EDUCATION, CENSUS, LETTER, MEDICAL, DIRECTORY, YEARBOOK, PORTRAIT, MILITARY, TALK, and AUDIO
- For files pertaining to their entire life, I use keywords such as
HISTORY, JOURNAL, BIO, GENEALOGY, and PEDIGREE between the
name and event date, so these still sort with the person, but
after the chronological files
- I don't leave spaces in file names since some programs put characters such as percent signs, in empty spaces and make them harder to read
- Files named this way jump right to where they belong
automatically without you having to move them
there -- See the program EVERYTHING below -- and you can see what's in the file without opening it
- Files can be put in separate folders, but EVERYTHING finds them wherever they are on your computer and sorts them by person and in order
- Portraits named this way sort in chronological order; snapshots would too, but there may be too many, so I have developed a different labeling system for those
USING "EVERYTHING" TO FIND AND SORT FILES
- EVERYTHING is a free program for Windows that finds files anywhere on your
computer for the search terms you enter -- available from https://www.voidtools.com/ ; there are similar programs for MACs
- Works fast, finds all resulting files wherever they are on your computer and shows them in alphabetical, and hence, chronological order, if named as above; to sort in other ways click on the column title, e.g. sort by path
- Program is also a major help in file maintenance for finding, renaming, moving, copying, and deleting files.
- Use it to find files on your computer that you have forgotten;, e.g. find all pdfs by searching for ".pdf" (no quotes); relabel them so they go where they belong
CONCLUSIONS
- For yourself start now gathering and organizing items, since only you can tell your own story fully and
our memories get worse with age.
- If you already have a system that works for you, continue to use it and only add parts of my system that will help, but be consistent, since later you can modify your labels all at once, if you decide to.
- Use EVERYTHING to find things already on
your computer and rename them so you can find them later.
- Don't try to do this all at once, since it is too large a task, but start small and maybe just use this system for new items, until you have time to go back.
- Keep in mind: "Small deeds done are better than big deeds
planned." Good luck!
Return to the Utah Valley
Technology and Genealogy Group Home Page or Don's
Class Listings Page .