Saturday, April 4, 2009

Saturday Night Genealogy Fun - show us your Genealogy Space

It's Saturday Night - time for some Genealogy Fun. Or maybe not, depending on your ability to transfer a photo from your digital camera to your computer. You can do that, can't you?

Here's the challenge for tonight:

1) Take a digital picture of your Genealogy Space - whether it is a table, desk, bookcase, whatever. Take more than one if you want.

2) Show off your Genealogy Space to all of us in a blog post showing your digital pictures. If you aren't blogging or don't want to show us your pictures, go to 3) below without passing Go or collecting another ancestor.

3) Tell us something about your Genealogy Space. How long does it take you to find something? Are you thinking of reorganizing your space?

Here's my pictures of the Genea-Cave. The Cave is in a small back bedroom, formerly my daughters, and it is chock full of paper and stuff. The first picture is of my desk and the computer setup:


As you can see, I have paper neatly stacked to the left of my computer (my working files), just in front of my printer (on the left, the things I don't know where to put them), and in an expensive filing rack on the back left side of the monitor. I take notes on the little papers to the left of my keyboard in unreadable Seaver-scrawl.

Just to the right of the desk, under the window, is my fine collection of mostly useless genealogy paper in notebooks in three low bookcases- this is the Fred and Betty (Carringer) Seaver Memorial Collection of mostly derivative sources and secondary information collected during my 20 years of research. I can find any piece of paper, but sometimes it takes more than 30 seconds. On top of the three bookcases, and almost to the window level, is my collection of genealogy magazines, newsletters and journals. I've been collecting them for a long time, and rarely go through them. I wish that they were all digitized and/or online. They aren't! Yet.



To the left of the desk is two bookcases - a tall one with my "active" notebooks of my research, including genealogy reports of my ancestry, my wife's ancestry and my reports on my one-name Seaver, Carringer, Dill and other surnames. The smaller bookcase holds my family history photo albums. On top of the smaller bookcase is the Randy Seaver "M&M Happiness" jar, a wine glass with stuck M&Ms in it, my grandfather's gold watch that doesn't work, and a green underwater camera from 2007, among other things:


That's it! Well, wait, that's not it. I forgot to take a photo of the large filing cabinet, and two small ones, the round table with stacks of paper, and the floor to my right and back with boxes of genealogy society stuff (and family photographs). Oh well. Next time.

Now do you see why I call it the Genea-Cave? I even tidied the stacks up before I took the pictures! If I were to take some time to put everything in a proper place, reorganize my files, and clean off my desk it would take weeks away from manic blogging, researching and losing stuff. Hey, it's all mine. My kids and wife will have a field day with it if I check out early. I hope they can find my Genealogical Will codicil. I wonder where that is now? It would be funny if it weren't sad, eh?

16 comments:

Elizabeth O'Neal said...

You're a brave man to show us your work area, Randy. Thanks for the giggle!

kinfolknews said...

Here is mine Randy. http://tr.im/igGh
I should get to work and clean mine up!

Anonymous said...

Randy,
Way too embarrassing to even attempt. ;-) I tried to back up to take a photo, and I fell over a stack of books. After I extracted myself, I tripped over some file folders, which let loose a storm of paper. My mind is organized; sadly my office is not.
Donna

Unknown said...

very fun, thanks. here's mine: http://tiny.cc/C72jD

M. Diane Rogers said...

Here's my desk, Randy. Sometimes I do surprise myself with how fast I can find something. Once in a while I still feel like pastprologue though! CanadaGenealogy

TCasteel said...

I enjoyed this little peek into your genea-zone - and decided to join in:
http://tr.im/igTr Thank you for the Sat. night fun!

Louisiana Genealogy Blogs said...

Hmmmm, I did not see a coffee cup. Nor did I see a tippie cup and few stray raisons from a small childs lunch... Hey! There were no squashed 1/2 eaten sandwiches, either. I thought those items were mandatory.

Sandra Ruffing said...

Very nice! Sorry I missed this maybe I can show off mine next time. = )

Patti Browning said...

I gave your idea a whirl and posted my space to my blog. Wow, my space looks positively sparse compared to some of you out there!

Unknown said...

Randy, I have a stack of paper in neatly labeled folders and two working file bins also with labelled file folders. In the corner of my dining room. Everything else is filed in a two drawer file cabinet by Surname and document type with an index and table of contents for each Surname and Document type. I have another small pile in my working file bins of things that need to be input into Legacy. Lost Treasures Committee has grown to have its own bin in my livingroom. Not much to take a picture of. I do have a nice ceramic plaque which hangs above my computer: "A House With out Books is Like a Room Without Windows, Horace Mann" a gift from my Canadian Uncle.

Unknown said...

Okay, remember work space is rarely pretty. Here's my post

Gini said...

Randy,I have always wanted to see how others work and what their spaces look like, thank you for starting a "fun" Saturday night, it was the best time I have had on sat in a while (genealogy speaking of course!). It is also motivating to me and I guess to others on becoming organized. I joined in and posted my little corner too.. Ginisology

Paula Hinkel said...

Here's mine. You come up with such fun ideas! Seriously, I feel a lot better now than I did about my filing piles.

Here's mine:

http://tinyurl.com/dgfkd4

Lee Drew said...

It looks like most of us have collected enough paper to equal a fairly large tree.

Here's my office two years ago. http://tr.im/iibn The CRT's have been replaced with 3 flat screens now (it helps to spread all my project windows across multiple monitors).

I have two other rooms in our home that I've claimed for wall to wall file cabinets, book shelves and file servers .... just for genealogy. You tend to collect a lot of documents and data after 50+ years of research.

4TB of data and scanned images now... Wish I could say that I work in a totally paperless office at home, but how can any family history researcher not have the feel and smell of old documents in their hands and still claim to be happy?

Carol Wilkerson said...

I was gone yesterday, so I am just catching up on the fun today. Here's my link to Genealogy Central 98366:
http://tinyurl.com/dduh26

Colleen said...

Oh goodie. This time instead of cleaning the area first, I posted my workspace as is. For shame.

www.omchorations.blogspot.com