Digital genealogy organizing project Step 6: Naming the files

Three months ago I announced a 3-month project to organize the digital genealogy files already on my computer, so that I could then begin adding new files to an organized structure.  So here we are at the end of those 3 months, and at the last major step: (re)naming the individual files.

Once we have folders for each individual, it's time to name the files that will go into those folders.  Because files may be copied and sent to others, the file names themselves will still have to identify who the file is about. I like to then add a year to the name, so that multiple files will sort automatically in chronological order, giving me a timeline of events for that person.  This helps in identifying gaps in the documents. Finally, I want to know what type of event the document is for, as well as the type of document, such as a birth documented by a birth certificate, a death documented by the SSDI, and so forth.

I have a few documents for each person that don't fit neatly into the timeline (for instance, my request to the Social Security Administration for my father's SS-5 record), so these can go into a !Misc folder at the beginning of my father's folder. There might also be a !Photos folder for photos for which I haven't yet identified the year in which they were taken.  It would also be acceptable if I have found a digital document for someone but haven't yet had the time to name it appropriately.  I could put this into a !To be filed folder.  At the very least, these documents would still be associated with the individual that they are about.

In previous postings, I've discussed the idea of creating multiple copies of documents that refer to more than one person of interest (both individuals on a marriage record, all household members on a census record, etc.).  Might there be a case where you would make multiple copies of the same document just for the same person? This depends on how much you want to represent your ancestor's timeline as a series of documents. What if your only document identifying the year of birth is from a much later document (census, marriage, military, SS-5, death, and so forth)?  After all, a birth certificate may simply not exist, or may elude discovery for quite a few years.

What will the resulting list of file names look like?  Let's use my mother for the example:

I've duplicated the 1940 census record since it provides residence information for both 1935 and 1940. I can quickly review this list and see that I still need something for my mother's marriage (I have a scanned newspaper article that I haven't filed yet) and more death-related information (such as the obituary).

Now I'm ready to download or scan new documents, and add them to my collection.