Saturday Night Genealogy Fun – show us your genealogy space
Here’s Geneamusing‘s challenge:
1) Take a digital picture of your Genealogy Space – whether it is a table, desk, bookcase, whatever. Take more than one if you want.
2) Show off your Genealogy Space to all of us in a blog post showing your digital pictures. If you aren’t blogging or don’t want to show us your pictures, go to 3) below without passing Go or collecting another ancestor.
3) Tell us something about your Genealogy Space. How long does it take you to find something? Are you thinking of reorganizing your space?
Last year we began a low cost approach to renovating our garage for additional living space. We put a carpet down, installed cable for a TV, have a gaming station and tried to utilize our extra furniture such as a hide-a-bed, pool table, air hockey table, 4 chairs, kitchen table, treadmill, plus we keep regular garage things behind a wall of curtains. (Since the furniture is mostly hand-me-downs I’m just sure it helps create a genealogy ambiance!) Thankfully, we have a window air conditioner and several space heaters to help regulate the temperature depending on the season.
My work station is primarily on the old kitchen table plus I use the pool table and air hockey table as my holding and processing areas. Recently, I purchased a Macbook Pro but several of the great programs that I rely upon are either only available in the Windows platform or I will have to buy new software. One of those is The Master Genealogist program so for now I continue to use my Dell laptop for that. Our printer is in the bedroom and my husband configured the printer to work with all of our computers except the Mac because there is no Mac driver for it just yet. To print I have to get the item from my Mac to my Dell and that’s not so much fun but luckily I don’t print very often. Meanwhile I’m anxiously waiting for someone to develop the driver.
This set up works well so far because I don’t have to worry about any mess when guests visit plus everything is within easy reach. My filing cabinet is also in the garage but behind the curtain. Over the years I’ve scanned and deleted much of my research materials but here’s what’s left and much of these are originals so I intend on retaining the items.
I have my photos in albums and loose. I’ve spent much time organizing the originals and scanning them so I can fairly quickly and easily locate things.
I’m always looking at better arrangements and trying to identify and organize the information so that whoever may continue the family genealogy when I’m gone will be able to move forward and not spend so much time labeling and organizing.
Relative Storyboards 
It’s beautiful, I get the feeling that I could walk in there, sit down and get right to work without having to go thru piles or files to figure where I left off at and where to start. My goal is to have my desk and genealogy files as you do, thank you for sharing, it is very refreshing.
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Kay, the brown boxes, are those archival and acid free safe? I am looking for boxes like those to organize a huge box of family photos my mom brought to me to scan and go thru, they would be wonderful to use to organize them as you did.
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Gini,
Yes, they are I got them through the exposuresonline.com catalog http://www.exposuresonline.com/ExposuresOnline/Shopping/ProductDetail.aspx?CID=Storage&SCID=Art+Files&CollectionID=L171SHOEBOX&SiteNum=0&sortBy=Rank%20ASC I had to do it over time because they are a bit pricey for my taste but I wanted to get something a bit safer for the old photos.
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Should I be taking my oldest photos out of their albums and putting them in boxes?
Evelyn in Montreal
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There is lots of research about this. In my case I’ve taken the photos out of the magnetic albums, best I could and there was one album that was falling apart so I took those out. Otherwise, all the photos I have were never in albums. I just wanted some peace of mind in the type of container in which I was storing them plus I wanted them to stack nicely. You cannot tell from the photo but the boxes are labeled. I’ve been going through my Grandmother’s albums and have found that by proximity and association of the photos I’m able to make better sense of them.
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Thanks for the advice!
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I’ve been following these posts. The BEST system for organizing photos is the Creative Memories Power Sort Box. I have 3. Each box organizes up to 2400 photos, with room on the lid for large photos.
I have gotten every photo of mine out of the old “magnetic” albums. Here is why:
About twenty five years ago many album manufacturers came out with a new product called magnetic pages. These were made from a thick paper stock and coated with glue strips. There was a Mylar plastic covering both sides of this stock and it was claimed that this was a good way to preserve photographs. After being on the market for about fifteen years, conservators recognized that the glue being used had a very high acidic content. So much so, that after only ten to fifteen years in storage, new photographs were starting to show signs of deterioration. The acid was eating through the backs of the photographs and the Mylar was sealing in the acidic fumes causing a deterioration on the image side as well. In addition, some manufacturers were using PVC (Poly-Vinyl Chloride) instead of Mylar. PVC is a plastic that has very poor storage qualities and accelerates deterioration. Although most manufacturers have discontinued making these magnetic pages, there are still some out there that are producing them.
To view the Power Sort Box, go to http://www.mycmsite.com/marycluley
then “shop products” then “traditional scrapbooking” then “organizers” then “Power Sort System.” The box is in black and blue but the inside is black and looks like the “Mini Power Sort Box” below it, but is 4 times the size! It is SO great.
I hope I have helped someone today. With every sincere good wish,
Mary
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Wow, it is really interesting to see other people’s setups. My family is only able to trace its roots back four generations.
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