Saturday Night Genealogy Fun - Organisation! - True Confessions about Genea-Assets

This is the first time I have taken part in the SNGF, hosted by Genea-Musings.

Here is the mission!

1. Do you know where ALL your family history information is?
2. Grade yourself from A-F on how you have done with the filing of both tangible and digital genealogical material. A grade for each.
3. Look through your material and find something you had previously lost, forgotten or over looked. How does it add to your knowledge. Explain what you have found and how you will use the data, name the source.
4. Write a blog post and link to the thread on Genea-Musings

The short answer is that all my genealogical material is in my study. Sounds impressive, well that is, until I have to look for something. I have been researching since 1986, so during the last 25 years I have collected vast amounts of paper, letters, books and digital files. 

I have two filing cabinets containing files for family lines. I also have a set of files with information on genealogical software, church leaflets and perhaps some random genealogical bits. I also have another set of drawers which house my genealogy photographs - those I have inherited from family members and those taken at cemeteries. I also am conducting a one place study and the material for that is housed in a drawer in the filing cabinet.

I also have a series of floppy discs which contain an assortment of material. My elderly desk top still has a working floppy drive and last year I transferred all the contents to a folder on an external hard drive. I have various files on both my laptop and external drive all relating to my family history. I am sure that I have many duplicates of digital and paper copies and I need to weed out the duplicates and organise them better. 

Sometime ago we were sent a copy of an article from the local newspaper. A reporter had interviewed my father in law about his time in the Navy during the Second World War.  My father in law passed away last year and as a result my husband now wants to explore his Dad's military life. I hunted for that newspaper cutting for several weeks and found it thankfully, in the filing cabinet in a random file of newspaper cuttings. The cutting has now been scanned and placed upon my blog in memory of V J Day

My grades for digital and tangible material is a D. I have graded myself harshly as my work is in need of a serious overhaul and is simply crying out to be organised better......I have been in the middle of that for at least 6 months and keep being distracted. I think back to my management training - SKILL, WILL  & FOCUS!