My Genealogy Space

A blog I follow makes suggestions on things to blog about in your own blog (does that make sense???)....so I am following up on last Saturday's suggestion on taking pictures of, and describing, your genealogy workspace.

Below is my desk, the printer sits on a little table (a night-stand in a previous life) to the left. The desk is actually pretty darn clean at the moment, but that is because the last 2 weeks or so I've been focusing on things other than genealogy. Usually there are piles and piles of paper all over the desk, but don't touch it, because I know exactly where everything is. My scanner is to the right, sitting on top of my computer tower.


To the bottom left of the picture you can see my way-past-its-expiration-date office chair. I've had it for over a decade now, and it's served me well. I never wanted to get rid of it because my cat adored that chair, she would climb up the back as if it were a tree, and the chair never showed any wear from that. No pulls, nothing! How is that possible??? So, I determined it was a magic chair and was the source of all my power.

Now though, sadly, the cat is singing with the Choir Invisible (that's her on the computer screen), and the bolts and nuts in the chair have a disturbing habit of falling out, mostly while I'm sitting in it (ask my sister, she witnessed it once). Also, the right arm-rest spins in a complete circle, sometimes while my arm is resting on it.

So, yes, yes, I know, it needs to be replaced. I'll get right on that, I promise.

The picture below shows the space to the left of my desk, it is my "Bookcase of Genealogy Books". I've collected new and used books over the years, both on genealogies and on the histories of towns and regions I'm interested in. Also, in the bottom right, you can just see some piles of papers and binders. I'm a big piler of paper. I have a system, and you shouldn't mess with my stuff. :-)



The room my desk is in was a spare bedroom, and in the closets I have shelves that I keep my binders on. This is all copied information from the library at salt lake, or other electronic sources that I thought were important enough to keep a paper record of.



I pretty much know where everything is, and can find it quickly. I rely a lot more on my electronic files than paper anymore, unless it's new information. Everything is organized on my computer as well, by type and surname; country and town information is stored as well, and I keep spreadsheets to help me keep track of what surnames belong to what towns and how they migrated over the years. Spreadsheets are my friend, but I do know that using a spreadsheet means you are creating a workaround because something else doesn't work. I wish my family tree software was more flexible with what fields I could export or report on.

I would like to re-do my binders, they were organized a long time ago and could do with a re-fresh. I also have a HUGE backlog of pictures to scan.

So there you have it!!! My space! :-)