Sorting Saturday - Revisiting my organisation goals

Way back in May 2010 I posted two blog posts regarding my plans to re-organise myself and virtually start again with my family history research (see Let's start at the beginning...Why I need to be organised and make research goals -23 May 2010 and Unlearning what I have learned - 30 May 2010)

I thought I would sit down and analyse how I have progressed, or rather, how I haven't progressed....I have decided to make myself a Sorting Saturday challenge. I will post a Sorting Saturday blog every Saturday and try and deal with my disorganisation in little chunks to save being overwhelmed by the whole. 


First I'll take a look at the organisation 'goals' I made back in May 2010:

• read some basic beginners guides to Genealogy and Family History - online and offline. I will share and discuss on this blog the beginners guides that I find the most helpful and interesting. Yes I think I may have actually achieved this goal.

• Beginners Guides to Genealogy & Family History Research - Part 1 - Online Videos
• Beginners ...Part 2 - Online Guides
• Beginners ...Part 3 - Books and Magazines
• organise a new Family History folder arrangement on my computer hard drive - and share my ideas! With this one I partly pass and partly fail. I did write a blog post on hard drive organisation and I have mostly reorganised my hard drive...but not completely.
• Hard drive organisation for Genealogists and Family Historians 
• set up template spreadsheets to record all research and correspondence - I will share my template ideas here and discuss some of the places I found the inspiration for them. Well, I did write a blog post about research logs but I am afraid I have not yet worked out my own. A definite to-do for an upcoming Sorting Saturday.
• Beginners: Research Logs in Family History
• start my new Legacy file with the basic information about myself and my immediate family. I hope to re-familiarise myself with the features of the software - data entry, reports, charts, searching, sorting, sources and source citation (or Start a new file in Legacy, begin with myself and work backwards methodically, recording all sources, attaching relevant source documents and attaching photographs). I haven't started a new Legacy file yet, another item for an upcoming Sorting Saturday. 
• Create research goals and detailed plans. I haven't done this but I imagine this will be an ongoing task I will progressively do after I have achieved the basic goals above.
• Organise, tag and label the photographs on my computer (digital photos as well as scanned photos and documents). This is a rather large goal, so I will have to figure out a way to break it down into smaller chunks, say, one folder at a time.
• Organise my Google Bookmarks. Another fail, another to-do.
• Organise my Bookshelves on Google Books. Another fail, another to-do.
• Continue learning more about professional Genealogy and Family History through blogs, web sites, books and journals. I think I have achieved this one, but once again this is an ongoing task as well.
• My longer term goals include publishing some of my research on this blog and writing a detailed history book about my Fullerton ancestors. I have put some of my research on this blog. I still have the Fullerton book to work on though and that is a BIG goal.

Now I have a few extra goals to add to this list.

• Sort out my Twitter account, organise the tweeters I am following into different lists.
• Sort out the blogs I am following with my Google Reader account.
• Create lists on Facebook so I can sort my news feed easily by category.
• Begin using Google Calendar.
• Sort out all my emails, stored across several old email addresses, into one account on Gmail.
• Sort out all the items I have saved in my Ancestry Shoebox and all the 'maybe' information I have saved in several 'working' Ancestry Family Trees.
• Create a computer back-up routine.
• Photograph/scan all the family history material I have storied in hardcopy in folders.
• Work out what to do with my collection of genealogy magazines, books and CDs.
• Sort out the 'family history box' - the general place I put family history related clippings from newspapers etc.
• Improve my time-management skills.

I'm looking forward to lots of busy Sorting Saturdays in the near future. Hopefully I am finally on my way to becoming a more disciplined, organised family historian. Positive thinking!

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