Organise Your Stories

 "Organisation is what you do before you do something,
      so that when you do it, it’s not all mixed up."
                                                           — A.A. Milne

As you collect your stories you need to organise your family information into a logical order. Have you developed your own plan of action?

Do you know what framework you will use build your family history?

Here are some ways in which we organise family stories:

Create a timeline.
Timelines for an individual and a family are important tools to keep track of the people and the events that affected them. Often, the impact of certain events doesn't show up in interviews but becomes clear when recorded in the time line.

Build lists or inventories.
These are essential in getting organised. A list also highlights the information you may be missing and helps you decide how you are going to retrieve it. Look at documents, memorabilia, heirlooms etc

Digitise your key photographs.
Every family has photos but usually they are in albums. You face the task of deciding upon the important photos and getting them digitised by having them scanned. If you have the skills and the equipment you may be able to do this yourself but often it best to have this done professionally.

In the pages that follow we will tell you a bit more about each and, from time to time, we will add new pages.