I had *just* finished establishing a system of filing documents that seemed most useful to me (I found Sharon DeBartelo Carmack's "Organizing Your Family Records" extremely useful and easy to read and understand) when I started using Clooz. Understandably, I was not very excited at the prospect of throwing all that time (and money!) out the window and starting over. So.... I adapted to the two systems as follows. While I'm only now starting on other documents besides the census (love it already!) I think this will work well and still be easy to, at a glance, see what kind of record is involved. My manual filing system is as follows: Color-coded: Blue for my maternal line, red for my paternal line; yellow for my husband's paternal line and green for his maternal line. I found some *great* tabs for the hanging files which are actually 3-sided, the third side being a very narrowly typed bar that shows when viewed from above. No more flipping through all the hanging folders to peer through half-covered tabs and see what's in each folder. Each family has files for the same kinds of documents; i.e.: Birth records - GIRTEN, Census records - GIRTEN, City Directories - GIRTEN and the like. I used the subject headings suggested in Carmack's book, adding a few of my own. Some of them are: Birth records, Marriage Records, Tax Records, Probates (wills and inventories, etc.), Genealogies (published), Genealogies (informal) - family group records from relatives, etc., School Records, Photographs and so on. If anyone would like, I'll gladly send you the list or you most likely can get the book at your local library which is where I found it. So once I have the documents sorted by subject and by family name (a marriage license for KINGSTON and DUFFY would go with the man's family, just as most of us decide to do with family group records). After I'd done all this, as I say, that's where Clooz entered the picture. I refused to groan and put on my thinking cap. So here's my labeling system for those documents in Clooz: A GIRTEN Census record starts with the first four letters of the surname (filing name for the manual system) GIRT. Then I put the first three letters of the type of record: CEN. After that I use the Clooz system of three digits. Like this: GIRT CEN 001. All the LINDLEY records would start over: LIND CEN 001 and the like. I refrained from putting the state in the census label in Clooz, not because it was too long in theory, but because in the hub listing it didn't let me see the number I'd designated, and when I have to go back for some reason to compare the Clooz input with the paper document, it's a little more bulky and time-consuming to do so. (Besides, the state is listed in the directory listing.) Each of the documents is labeled themselves with the Clooz numbering system and then filed in the appropriate, color-coded and tabbed, location. There was one last problem I could see, and I *think* I've got that handled, too. Carmack had suggested an inventory list that you insert in each file as to what is contained therein. BUT under most research methods, as well as hers, you should keep a correspondence record as well. For now I've started a spreadsheet in Excel which lists the document by the Clooz control I.D. number, the surname that it's filed under (but that's proving unnecessary since my Clooz ID system shows it by the surname's first four letters -- if need be, I can apply a slight change to that system if I encounter names so similar as to create confusion if I hold unwaveringly to this system). The spreadsheet also lists the name of the person on the document, the date I've sent for it --and I change that to a "received" date when I'm successful in the request; the repository or person I'm communicating with or received it from, and then I have a column for "results" to note what I've achieved in the communication and what my future plan of action, if any, will or should be. I saw one form online somewhere that made a lot of sense when it had a column to show the *variations* of spellings searched under. More than once, already in my short span of time researching, I've wondered "gee, did I look under *that* spelling, too?" As Elizabeth says in her video, she's found Kelly spelled at least six different ways -- and from my court reporting experience I'm pretty sure she'll find more before she's through. <g> Anyway, as I say, I'm new to this but it looks to be a promising system. Although I didn't work with this type of document control in my court reporting work, it takes somewhat from those systems I have seen. And if any one of you has ever been intimately involved with a lawsuit (I'm so sorry.... <g>), you've most likely experienced the flood of paperwork that even smaller cases seem to generate in this day and age. I decided not to reinvent the wheel and to take advantage of the knowledge and experience of my clients and their staffs. They not only compile documents on one issue (like our family history) *but* just when they seem to get a handle on that situation, it's time to start compiling and organizing massive documents on another. Or they often have more than one running simultaneously -- now, THAT would send me running for the aspirin <GGG>. Marianne Lindley Girten in Anchorage