Family Historian User Group

While a newbie here on FH I have been doing this family history work, on my computer, for five years now. I am also a retired computer programmer, systems analyst, information systems designer and end-user support person.

My recommendations would be to -

1. Keep file names fairly short
2. Develop some standardisation regarding file names - I list below a few examples of my file naming.
3. Have a well structured set of directories in which all your images are stored - I have attached a screen shot of my Images directory

Birth Certificate - Barrett_Emily_Florence_Birth_Certificate.jpg
Newspaper Announcement - Ashby_Graham_Birth_Announcement.jpg
Picture of a Church - Adelaide_St_Johns.jpg
Wedding Announcement - Atkinson-Tonkin_Wedding_Announcement.jpg (Newspaper entry pre-wedding)
Marriage Announcement - Atkinson-Horsfall_Marriage_Announcement.jpg (Newspaper entry post-wedding)
Wedding write-up describing event, often includes, particularly, notes about clothing, floral decorations and the name of the celebrant - Andrews-Trezise_Wedding_Write-up.jpg
Picture of a person, just one picture held - Steenhuis_Alfons_Leonardus.jpg
Picture of a person, many pictures held - Dowse_Bruce_Trezise_24_Feb_1953.jpg
Picture of a female who has married - Butcher_Ida_Elizabeth_née_Dolphin.jpg
Picture of a ship showing its Port Side - DMS_Sibajak_Port_Side.jpg
Picture of a ship showing its Starboard Side - DMS_Sibajak_Starboard_Side.jpg
Picture of a troopship - HMAT_A20_Hororata.jpg

Surname first, then forenames, and then date where necessary. To be strictly correct the above example should read 1953_Feb_24, but I slip sometimes.

As you can see most file names highlight the person's / couple's names and then go on to state what type of image it is. I do not normally include dates and other data, except where it is 100% necessary, e.g. where two marriages occurred where the surnames of the bride and groom were the same, in such a case one would need to differentiate them, e.g. Jenkins-Hughes_Marriage_Announcement_1935_Jun and Jenkins-Hughes_Marriage_Announcement_1938_Apr.

The general principle in indexing is to go from largest 'concept' to smallest 'concept' and you will hopefully see that that is how I have structured my Images directory.

To go away from genealogy and try to illustrate using a housing related example, one might think of a structure such as -

England>Housing>Public>London Borough of Bromley>Elmstead Woods Estate>Framlingham Crescent>Number 6>Bathroom>Basin>Tap

All lower level concept names should always be expressed in the singular BUT at higher levels where one is defining a large group, e.g. Churches, it is acceptable to use the plural, just as I have done in my Images directory.

I trust and hope that you find these thoughts to be helpful.

I had previously come from using The Master Genealogist for many years, so I had adopted one of the conventions that was developed on there. See https://www.mjh-nm.net/SRCGUIDE.HTML#Top for details.

Briefly, it proposes a structured filename based on the source type: much along the lines offered by others in this forum. It's very comprehensive and has served me well over the years. An example would be:

DEAT_ENG_SAL_GOV_20160620_HOWELL, George Emerson.jpg for my father's death certificate. Another would be
CENS_GB1841_CON_ST-MARYS_HIGH-TOWN_JENNINGS.jpg for the census entry for an address on The Scilly Isles where the head of the household was my gtx3 grandfather Jennings

Gareth

A dilemma for David Ivester is whether to keep FH linked files within the FH Project Media folder or not.

One advantage of keeping linked media files within FH is they are included in FH Project Backups.
But if you keep good backups of all the ACDSee media files (or even better your whole PC) then that is not an issue.

Another consideration is when migrating FH Projects from one PC to another, or sharing across two PC.
The linked file name paths must be managed so they are consistent on each PC.

Linked media files within FH use a path relative to the FH Project Media folder.
So when that relative path is expanded to an absolute path it is always correct on any PC.

Linked media files external to FH use an absolute path that typically involves C:\Users\username\...
Such a username usually differs on each PC, so migrating/sharing FH upsets the absolute path names.
The alternative is to keep those external media files in a folder that avoids such a username.
e.g. Use C:\Users\Public\Media\... or use a separate disk/partition such as D:\Media\... that can be identical on any PC.
Then both FH and ACDSee can use that same folder structure on any PC.

I don't necessarily have a fully worked solution to this puzzle, but I have found the following practices useful.

1. If downloading (say a census image) from the likes of FMP, keep the proposed filename. Then if when investigating someone else who happens to be on the same schedule, when you download their census image, you get a warning that you already have this image - which should prompt you that you may be investigating someone for a second time - or realising who the lodger was!
2. I struggled with "meaningful names" and "appropriate directories" and eventually decided that it got too complicated and prone to error. Many software packages (including FH) maintain their own catalogue of media files - with indexing facilities appropriate to the program. So now I just use whatever name the media comes with and rely on titles and tags in FH etc to enable me to find the right file. I also dump everything in a single level media file. No doubt someone will warn me if there is some upcoming system limit to the number of files that you can have in a single directory.
3. If I am at, say, the National Archives and photographing various papers, I then keep the resulting files separate in meaningful directories (e.g. TNA2019-12-30/WO339~48300) using a tilda to replace any "illegal character". I am careful to include a photo of the file box with its reference numbers (and for TNA the little yellow ticket - if they still use that system). If I later reference them in FH, I copy the image across (Hard disk space is now cheap). Otherwise I will rely on some other package to tell me what the images are - initially it might just be a notepad/leafpad file in the subdirectory with notes made at the time against the IMG0123.jpg number! If necessary I include a corner of a notepad with my own "prompt" in the actual photographed image.

I tend to rename all downloads - these may be images (jpeg, etc) or PDF's (I always create a PDF of any transcript I find on, say, FMP). All these files are named to match the structure I use for naming Source records (whether input to FH manually or via AS) - Surname, Christian / Given Names, a hyphen, the Year and the type of source (e.g. "Jones, Peter Paul - 1802 Baptism record", "Smith, Reginald Archibald to Jones - 1843 Marriage record". If the source is a parish record rather than GRO Index I put the word "Parish" in between, say "Marriage" and "record".

All files, whether attached to a record in FH or not, are stored in the FH Media folder, which now has over 5,000 files in it. This made moving to a new machine, which had a different drive structure, a very simple / uncomplicated process.

As other have said, consistency is the key!