Organizing research materials

[ngauger]

I have a few books that cover the Baldwin Locomotive Works. So they are all together on a shelf (see below). Any other railroad books are just put wherever they will fit on the same 2 shelves.

Any digital pictures I have are on my hard drive and backed up once on an external drive and also a USB flash drive. That way I should never lose them

Some hints, having learned too late and having to correct these errors......

~ When naming folders (and pictures) Describe them in as much detail as possible. That way when you want to find something you can use the windows "Search" utility

I have a lot of pics that begin BLW or PRR or Gauge and when I search, I get about 400 results If I had thought it through, I would have used more descriptions

~~ Sort the pictures in different folders use a decent description and the date BLW 10-09-08 ..........ALWAYS use the same format for date. It does not matter what order the Year and Month are in, but BE CONSISTENT!!!!!!!!!!!

~~~ Use railroad names when possible on folders and files and pictures. Penna or Reading or Santa Fe 04-06-09

Now, you can have as many levels of folders as you want.... I have a folder names "PICS"
In that folder are about 300 folders from "Family Pics" to BLW Pics to Car Pics to Plane Pics... get the idea??????

In those folders are smaller folders Ex:. Family Pics has folders named by year and type --- 09 B-days 09 X-mas etc......

Now - the way I learned this is I recently backed up the last batch of pictures (I try to remember every few months) and when I accessed the "PICS" folder on the external drive, it says Files: 20567

I have over 20000 pictures!! No darn wonder it takes the computer a bit of time to search and then it returns hundreds of results!

So, be as precise as you can in the file names - it'll help!!!!

Now, as far as the internet, I just use Google.. It very seldom fails to find what I'm looking for. And the Image search is fantastic for finding historical train pics

My Bookshelf