How to Organize Family History Documents

Organizing your family history documents helps you to research your history.

Organizing family history documents allows you to find important items when you need them and reduce the risk of the items becoming damaged over time. Organizing and storing your documents properly will help to ensure they last throughout the years. Family history documents are important and should be cherished and protected. Organizing the documents may take some time, but once it is completed, you will be able to protect them and keep track of them.

Instructions

1. Scan all of the items and save them on your computer or external hard drive. A digital backup is a safe way to preserve your documents. Once you have them on your computer, you can sort them by the date, year, family member or another category and save them in individual folders. Save them onto an external hard drive to ensure they will not be deleted or lost if your computer crashes.

2. Store the items in a trunk, safe or fireproof box. Laminate all of the items before storing them to reduce creases in the paperwork. Sort all of the items according to the date, year, family member or another category and then use file folders to divide the documents and label them according to the contents. If the items are laminated, you can easily share them with family and friends and not have to worry about papers being ripped or gotten dirty by people touching them.

3. Purchase an accordion style binder or filing cabinet. Sort the documents according to the date, year, family member or another category and then place them into the different slots in the accordion style binder or into individual file folders.

References

• Vintage Maps: The Care and Conservation of Antique Prints
• Embracing Home