Archiving a Large Genealogy Collection

2 of 15 boxes. Overflow in front seat

As some of you know, Olive Tree Genealogy recently received a very large collection of genealogy documents and books. My husband and I are slowly going through the 15 boxes of material, and sorting them into groups.

We are not studying the material or taking an inventory at this point. We simply want to organize the documents so we can choose our first set of records for inventory while storing the rest.

Then we plan to methodically go through each "group" or set of documents, taking a careful inventory and deciding how/if we can make the records accessible to genealogists and historians.



I neglected to take a photo of all our groups but here is how we organized the materials as we went through each box:

• Published genealogy books
• Published genealogy booklets
• Family genealogies 
• Newspaper clippings
• Genealogy research notes
• Garbage

Start of the "Groups" That's me in the chair

Garbage? Did Someone Say GARBAGE????

Yes there was garbage. This collection has obviously been underway for many dozens of years. There were binders of printouts from Ancestral File (Remember that?) and other assorted printouts that had no current genealogical value. We spotted printouts dating back to the early 1980s. Most pages were in plastic sleeves in binders, so we spent some time (several hours) removing pages from binders, then removing the paper from the sleeves. We shredded the paper, kept the sleeves for the hundreds of loose documents we spotted, and will be tossing the binders if we find we do not need them for other loose documents in this collection.

We'll move on to more of the groups in the next blog post. If you want to follow along on our progress on this journey, just click on one of the tags or keywords at the bottom of this post.

Receiving a Large Collection of Genealogy Documents!

Genealogy Boxes Arrive

A few months back  Olive Tree Genealogy was offered some newspaper clippings from a donation a historical society had received. I was very excited to be asked and of course I agreed. A very large package soon arrived by mail consisting of hundreds of loose obituaries from newspapers.

As I was planning on how best to organize and inventory the clippings, another surprise came my way. I was told there were about a dozen large filing boxes full of miscellaneous genealogy items from the same donated materials.

This was too good an opportunity to save important historical records to pass up even though the thought of dealing with so many boxes was somewhat overwhelming.

My husband kindly offered to drive to the Society, some 3 hours distance from our home, to pick up the boxes. To my astonishment, there were over 15 large boxes full of genealogy binders, genealogy books, loose newspaper clippings, and more.  Here they are arriving at our home.

What To Do with So Many Boxes?

My husband and I are planners. We like to be organized. So we took a breath and decided we needed to sort the collection. First we needed a place to put the boxes where they would not be in the way but would be accessible. Then we could slowly and methodically "triage" the contents into organized groups of items.

Step One - Move & Triage!

So we moved to step one - moving the incoming boxes into our living room. Some had gotten wet in the journey in the rain to our home so removing the contents from wet boxes was our first priority.

My dogs helping me start the process

We took a break at this point but we plan to triage the contents ASAP. We saw at a glance that there are various items - hardcover genealogy books, genealogy booklets, binders of newspaper clippings, binders of research notes, family genealogies, and more. This next step will be a fun sort to organize into groups that we can either move to our basement until we have time to work on the contents, or keep in my office for starting an inventory.

The Journey Begins

Please follow along on our journey to inventory and preserve these documents. We aren't archivists but we plan to do our best. We also hope to figure out a way to make the documents accessible to genealogists and historians. If you have ideas or suggestions, feel free to leave them in the comments on this blog post.