UNDERUSED WEBSITES: DIGITAL PUBLIC LIBRARY of AMERICA

Underused Website Series: Digital Public Library of America

The Digital public library of America has a wealth of information with a click of your mouse.

As of the writing of this blog the main page says "Discover 34,425,540 images, texts, videos, and sounds from across the United States" 

Over 34 MILLION records, FREE, at your finger tips, in your pjs, drinking wine, morning, noon and night!!!

They even have a family research section (which is what we will focus on here)

Photos 

162,609 results for family photo

DPLA Photos 

Here's a clip of some of the photos found on DPLA.  There is a link in the description which takes you to a page with detailed information about the photo, (think citation)

Family Bibles 

2,753 results for "family bible"

There's a family bible section with images from old family bibles.  How cool is that??

Correspondence  

3,485 results for Civil War AND family letter

Imagine fining a letter your ancestor wrote back home 

Local Maps

75,920 results for county OR town OR city AND map

Looking for Sanborn fire maps--they are here. Old city maps, topo maps, flood maps, 

Year books 

22,777 results for school yearbook

Don't have a subscription to Ancestry to see the yearbooks, try DPLA

Military Records (includes Photographs and Service records)  

15,027 results for soldier* OR regiment AND military

Civil war photographs

103,641 results for "enlistment card" OR "draft card" OR "military service record"

A variety of military documents

Oral Histories

34,510 results for "oral history" interview

Various oral histories from all over 

Family History and Genealogy books

350,466 results for genealogy

tons of books to peruse about genealogy (family histories, phone book listings, wills, more photos, cemeteries)

 And I even found a video library with videos on using DPLA for family research, making gifs and a sundry of other videos.

 We have just scratched the surface of this website.  I can see me spending hours and hours just scrolling thru the vast amounts of reference material and information on this site.... and its FREE!!  Book mark the website DP.LA (yes thats the website address)

Dont forget to read the Terms of Service 

Happy Hunting!!

P.S.  just did a search for Newspapers in the regular search box (not on the family search tab)  and here's what came up over 1 MILLION newspapers!!!

1,020,362 results for newspapers

File Organization from a Scattered Mind's Point of View

How did I Start?

After writing this blog post over 3 years ago, I thought I'd share how my system has been set up and how it is working.

I opted to set up my files by file type

My Files list

I love my system, it is simple and easy to find any record.

 

• the list of folders (no additional folders "nested" inside each other)
• a simple naming convention, and I utilize the metadata in file explorer (I use windows, but apple has a file explorer too) 

file naming convention and tags

I love that the metadata (tags) are searchable in file explorer, so I can search for a year (1872) and I will get all files with 1872 in the file name or in the metadata tags.

I created a few videos about tags, on you tube.

Win 7

Win 10 part 1

Win 10 part 2

I have tried other systems and could never remember how the system worked, and had to keep going in to see how things were filed, named, and what folder to put each file in, based on the person's name.

Happy Hunting!!!

***************************************************

(Originally posted back in 2015)

How do I Start? 

After reading others blogs and comments on Facebook about sorting and organizing one's files (both electronically and paper copies) I'm still trying to sort it out in my mind!  See I'm so organized, I feel & look disorganized....at least that is and has been my excuse.

What I've seen and heard is

• Sort by Family name
• Sort by Person
• Sort by Family group
• Sort by document type
• Sort by year

My problem I see the pros and cons of all the systems.....Aggh calgon take me away!!! 

So as usual, I know what I don't want, but not sure of what I want. And what I don't want is a lot of nested folders inside folders inside folders.....So is my answer to make a list of what I don't want, and eliminate those systems that have/enable those qualities and then pick from the rest?  Or do I use the capabilities of the pc (paper has no capabilities, it just lays in a file folder) and use shortcuts to place links into the electronic filing system where it needs to go?

Decisions, Decisions!?!?!?!

After careful thought and dreaming about the system I want....(does any one else do this?) I believe I have a beginning plan....

Paper files by type (Federal Census, marriage, death, birth, christening, land, probate, etc)

Reasoning: less files, and easy to find a file when needed.

Computer files: originals filed like paper files, shortcuts filed in folders by family name, then given name

Folder Smith

      Sub folder John

      Sub folder Mary