FEBRUARY ORGANIZATION CHECKLIST THANKS for all your letters about our FINALLY GET ORGANIZED January Checklist. For many it gave us the chance to do some of the things we've been putting off for a rainy day. For some of you in the blizzard zone of the winter season, you had more time than the rest of us to organize your computer desk, and get papers filed! CONGRATS to all! Now for this month's list: WEEK ONE: 1. Decide in a genealogy management program, if you don't have one already. There are demos of many in AOL's Genealogy Forum Program Libraries. These are easy to download. Perhaps my best advice is to be SURE that the program is GEDCOM capable. That means it can create for export, or import GEDCOM files so you can share your data with others. If you already have a genealogy program, you can REST UP this week! Or better yet, buy that new one your've been dreaming of, and tranfer your data using the GEDCOM option. Check out all the new options! WEEK TWO: 1. Take the surname folders or notebooks A thu F (which you created last month), and check to be SURE that each name is in your genealogy program. 2. Remember all of last month's filing of genealogy papers? Well, this is the time to verify that everything you have on paper is IN THE COMPUTER! This means list every document as a note under each person listed on the document! Be very specific, naming things as follows: Seattle, King County Health Dept, Birth Certificate #12345567, dated Jan 28, 1951 lists female child as XXXXXXX with father YYYYYYY and mother ZZZZZZZZ. Report date: February 13, 1951, signed by Dr.XXXXXX, attending OBGYN. WEEK THREE: 1. Take that huge pile of photos you've been putting together since last month and begin to sort them into generations such as: Mother as a child Dad's parents our children vacations we took unknown relations from great-grandma's trunk Put these into huge manila envelopes which have been clearly labeled. You need to go through this overview process, in order to determine how much work you'll be doing in later months' assignments. Be sure as you add newly developed photos, that they end up in the correct manila envelopes. You'll find stray sets of prints and negatives all over the house, even months later. Just get them together, and in the right manila envelope! WEEK FOUR: 1. Learn how to join a genealogy related NEWSGROUP from the Internet. .............................................................................. ....................... Now, that list wasn't all that bad, was it? Indeed, you did the worst part last month. Yet, I have been honing the schedule for the remainder of the year, and have come up with some dillys. So stay tuned each month on the 1st for the FINALLY GET ORGANIZED CHECKLIST!