Organization

Yesterday, 8 Aug 2009, I attended a Roots Magic Class taught at the
San Diego Genealogy Society
RootsMagic User Group
This is a regularly scheduled class
2nd Saturday of the month
10 a.m. - 11:30 a.m.
St. Andrew's Lutheran Church
8350 Lake Murray Blvd.
(at the corner of Jackson Drive)
San Diego, CA 92019

Even though the room was over crowded and had students at all levels in the class, The teacher was marvalous and was able to answer very elementary questions regarding input that actually showed more advance students a few new tricks. Specifically the capability of RootMagic4 to clearly and effectively organize your resources.
The teacher also shared with us two binders that she has organized her sources for easy retrieval. Following her own numbering system and labeling for her understanding, she has created quite an efficent system of resources.

In particular she has a binder for each family and she has used different color paper for each family line. I can really see where this could be a great help. She has a colored coded summary page for each indiviual. Roots magic supplied her a method to easiily create summary pages for each of her "key" indiviuals---sure beats trying to fight with open windows opened on top of open windows when doing research.

To me "key" indiviuals are defined as direct lineage to me, famous people once or twice removed, and those indiviuals with interesting stories that may not be direct line but someone I want to find easily. Also those with a special gold star on their colored summary indicating they were in the military.

I had already started my own color system but with highlight colored corners of the pages. My color system went something like this:
Pink for Chapin because my mother really loved her Grandma A.C. Chapin Reed, Blue for the Reeds because I have always thought of them as genteel. Red for Hayleys because I preceived the most brickwalls in this line, Green for Carters etc.

So I went to a Roots magic class to further explore and learn about this revision 4 software program. Yet as an extra bonus of the class, I was exposed to how another genealogist has tackled the resource organization issue. Besides adding to the Roots magic resource screens, I plan to also print up some binders of colored sheets. Thank you, San Diego Genealogy Society RootsMagic User Group, for a wonderful class.