Heartland Genealogy

What's in your genealogy tool cabinet? Do you ever experiment with various software tools until you find one that fits your needs or thinking process? Well, I have experimented with various tools. One of those tools I'm experimenting with right now is Tony Proctor's program to create what he calls a ' Buddy File '. This is being discussed in Dear Myrtle's Facebook group . My Buddy File post describes my learning process. At least one of the comments discussed whether the time involved in creating the text file was worth it. I have to admit that was my initial thought as Tony made his presentation last week.  Since I want to use the 'buddy file' for transcriptions, it dawned on me this morning that I likely already have the information to put in a buddy file. I just need to copy/paste into Notepad and save the file.

Do you ever find yourself looking for a picture of an individual in a group and not finding it? Or, do you struggle to find a digital image of a document that someone witnessed? I know I struggle with this issue. That's why Tony Proctor's presentation regarding indexing off file names during last Monday's session of Monday's with Myrt proved intriguing. ( Organizing More Resources ) Tony developed a simple program to attach a 'buddy file' to the image. As he was presenting, I kept thinking, about the time involved to add this information to each and every photograph. Then, Hilary commented that she has been using Tony's program to attach transcriptions to a digital image. With the transcription attached to the image, I would be able to search my files for a member of an ancestor's FAN club and find records they were mentioned in. That makes it worth the time to learn how to do this.