On Saturday at 5 p.m., I’ll be presenting “Organizing Your Digital Environment” at the Southern California Genealogical Society‘s Jamboree in Burbank.Organizing Genealogy Research

Organizing Your Digital Environment the Sassy Jane Way is all about streamlining and simplifying. No color codes or numbering systems or complicating filing rules needed.

My genealogy organizing principles come from my career as an archivist, where we processed, stored, retrieved, and digitized lots and lots and lots of primary sources. So my Jamboree session will show you how to use archival principles to:

1. Organize your information on your computer(s)

2. Use Internet tools for managing your online life

Because it’s a fairly complex topic, the presentation has a lot of detail that can seem too dense just for one session. So I’ve put together an e-book, Sassy Jane’s Guide to Organizing Your Genealogical Research Using Archival Principles. It’s a 40-page PDF file you can download here.

It covers in detail the ideas and solutions from my presentation, including file folder structure; file-naming conventions for downloads, scanned documents and photographs; the authority file; and how to digitally label your family photographs.

Organizing your digital environment pays off in more time to research and less time spent looking for records you know you have.