Life at the Home20

When I was typing my post for Friday I unexpectedly found myself talking about the Hadley house at Mill Creek Hundred in Delaware and planning to share the photos that GetAlong had made for me when he visited there several years ago.  The problem was that when it came time to scan the photos into the computer I realized that I didn’t have a clue where they were.  I searched for what seemed like a couple of hours.  As I searched I kept thinking how much I wished my genealogical scanning project was completed because then I would be able to just go to Scansoft’s PaperPort 10 program and search for documents related to the Hadley family.  I might have had to scroll through a few thumbnail images but it would have been so much faster than physically searching through piles of unsorted documents or even looking through my somewhat organized file folders and binders.

In PaperPort 10, Genealogical Scanning Project, Part 2 I explained how to scan each document, single or multi-page, into a PDF file.  PDF files are probably the easiest to share with other researchers.  Anyone can download Adobe Acrobat Reader for free and no one has to worry about whether to send images in tiff, bmp or jpg file formats.  You never know what format the recipient prefers and is that really your problem anyway?

Now in order to be able to find a specific file at a future date, you must tag the files as they are scanned in.  Once the file appears in the work space on the right side of the screen, you can right click on the image and then click on Properties.  This will open a window where you can type in words that will help you locate the document later on.  These words might typically be the surnames mentioned, localities mentioned or whatever helps you identify the significance of the document.  These words are entered in the section named Keywords.  You can also type in a description in the Subject area if you like.

Now when you want to search for a document you simply click on the icon which looks like a pair of binoculars.  Another box will appear so you can enter the parameters for your search.  When specifying parameters, you will be asked where to search, All PaperPort folders or the Current folder, with or without subfolders.  If you choose All PaperPort folders, the program will search the entire computer.  If you choose Current folder, it will only search the folder you have been scanning documents into.  The latter is probably more appropriate.  Click Search and a list of matching documents will appear to the right.  You will only see the filenames in this list, however, if you right click on a filename, a thumbnail image will appear at the top of the workspace.  Next to the image will be the information you typed into the file’s Properties, such as Keywords and Subject information.  Keep right clicking on filenames until you see the document that you are searching for.  The more keywords that are typed into the Properties, the more direct the search results will be and the fewer the number of files that will have to be examined.

Now isn’t that much easier than looking through a file cabinet full of paper based folders?  Once you locate the document in question you can either email a copy to the another person, fax it or print out a copy for inclusion in a packet you may be compiling for someone without a computer.  Should you ever need the original in your filing cabinet, just make a note of the filename which should be a number of some sort and go to the file cabinet to retrieve the original.  My originals are in sheet protectors, labeled with the numerically based filename and placed in numerical order in binders.

Next time I’ll talk about the other reason I want all my research digitized - Hurricane Rita.

ScanSoft PaperPort 11 is available at Amazon.com!

Tags: Computers & Genealogy //