If you do use binders, here are some things to think about:
• I started out with a different color for each family but quickly ran out of colors because I have more families than the store had different colors. Later, I moved to all one color with labels on the binder edge so they looked neater.
• Another way to use the color system is to just go with 4 colors – one for each of your grandparents’ lines.
• By trying to sort them by family, I almost immediately ran into the problem of which book gets the marriage certificate when two people marry and I have a binder for each family… In trying to cut down on paperwork, I didn’t want to make duplicates and add more paper! That’s how the certificate binder came to be. I also had one for census records that got abandoned due to evolving methods of storing them. I need to create a cemetery binder because I do reference those a lot and from a lot of locations and I can add pictures, too.
One of the most critical things you can do and one most often overlooked is writing on the back of photos. We wish our ancestors had identified everyone but then we do the same thing. It’s easy to think I remember that vacation and who is in that photo but years from now, someone else may have those photos and not have a clue who those people are or where they were taken.
Another thing about photos is that so much is done digitally now that a lot of photos are never printed. Will jpgs still be around 20 years from now? I suggest having your favorite digital shots printed at the store, not on a home computer, so they will last longer. And then write on the back.
More to follow soon!
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