30 Seconds: A Guide to Organizing Your Genealogy Files

by Robert R. Langman, Jimmy B. Parker

There appears to be a need among many genealogists to find a way to organize their papers, so they can find them quickly. This book presents a choice of filing systems. The first, is a filing cabinet filing system and the second, is a notebook filing system. This is written to show two ways of filing genealogy papers. There are ten steps to organizing your papers. Included are drawings and illustrations (some in color) that help the reader to understand the steps to organizing. Many actual examples are included to assist genealogists with their own files. This book is written to the beginning genealogist, the experienced genealogist, as well as the professional genealogist.

82 pages, Paperback

First published August 17, 2001

Reviews

[Lyn Jensen · Rating 2 out of 5]

This is the only book I've ever found which focuses on organizing your genealogy research, beyond "how to conduct your genealogical research." It's not about researching, it's about what to do with all that research--all those notes, charts, and documents. It's not well organized, it's littered with typos, and it doesn't answer a large number of thorny questions, but it's better than nothing.

[Knight · Rating 1 out of 5]

This book is poorly written, with a lot of misspelled words, awkward sentences, and cutesy, not always relevant, quotations and stories. There is a lot of repetition. Like a textbook, each chapter begins with a summary of the previous one. But the book is short, so these problems are not as bad as they would be in a longer work.

Written in 2001, it doesn't reflect all the capabilities of newer genealogy computer programs and doesn't address scanning documents.

People who have never worked in an office will appreciate the details on hanging files, folders, and tabs.

[Brenda · Rating 5 out of 5]

A very good color coding system!