I suspect the answer will be, “whatever works for you”, but is there a ‘proper’ way to organise source / media files? What I mean is, is it better to create
a single folder, say …\sources, and dump all files for all people into that one location
or
create a complex hierarchy to keep the data for each person separate.
The advantage of the former I guess is that from within Gramps you will browse to the same location every time you want a source / media file. The downside being you probably have to use a fairly strict naming convention for the files in that folder, or you’ll never find the one you’re looking for.
Whereas the latter allows you retain whatever name the file came with because the path to it describes what it is. Setting up the folder hierarchy might be a pain though, as might be having to browse to a different location just about every time you want a file.
My Method
Folder Called “Media”
Sub Folders “1851 Census”
“1861 Census”
“BMD Certificates”
“Memorial Headstones”
etc etc
Mine are stored on a NAS but you can use your HDD
phil
On 28/07/2024 18:36, Gramps 5.1.6 on Win 10 desktop PC & Win 11 laptop
via The Gramps Project (Discourse Forum & Mailing List) wrote:
An extensive article called “Meaningful filenames” was posted to the wiki in 2008 and has had some minor revisions over years. It touches on many ideas about this subject. You might find it interesting.
Personally, I’d rather see the database aspect of the Media category expanded so the organization was better there. Then let Gramps manage the filenames and directory structure. It seems to me that meaningful filenames and folder structures are ultimately a futile pursuit that churns data and wastes initiative.
When I find media in a person, I create a directory for that person and I deposit all the media found. I know that if I want to find the original, it will be at this person’s.
I organise media in \sources and below that 15 directories … census, parish registers, travel etc. In naming the media files, I try not to use the person’s name because
they may refer to more than one person
the name may change
sometimes this process may reveal connections that were not obvious but helpful, such as people living in the same street or people travelling on the same boat.
I use only one folder for every media file. Each file name starts with a unique identifier for grouping by type (e.g. A0001 means “civil status document” #1). Moreover, I report in the file name every person mentioned in the document (using linux, a large number of characters is available).
I use a series of subfolders based upon the type of records. Birth, Deaths, Marriages, Church, Military, etc.
But if you are contemplating a restructure of your folders and possibly renaming of the files… Check out the Media Verify addon tool.
Before you do any moving or renaming of files, run the MV’s Generate option. This will reset the checksums of the Gramps media record so that they agree with the raw file on your hard drive. This is important if you ever edited the raw media file after you included it in Gramps. (i.e. cropped the record or found a better quality image, etc)
Then you can go about moving and renaming files.
When done reorganizing your media folders and files, run MV’s Verify option. This will find the moved or renamed files and present you with a list of the old information and where it found the file with the new information. Using the Fix option MV will update the Gramps’s record’s Path field to the new information.
I used this when splitting my single Census folder into folders by country and for the U.S. by country and year.
Personally, only folders I have that has names in them is the ones that I have scanned that is only photos. Otherwise its only based on what the record is.
The name of my files also only have names in them, if its the only people in the record.
For example a birth certificate for one person will have the main persons name in the file name.
but an image of a church books page that includes multiple baptisms, do not as its multiple people in it. So name would just be base on what they are, etc what parish, what year, name archive have given it, page number etc.
My folder structure is something like: (Not exact, just from memory and an example, I have more folders)
Main media folder
Images (personally scanned ones for example)
Folder with descriptive name, may have names here.
Documents
Church books
[Type]
[Files]
Censuses
Norway
1891
[Files]
1920
[Files]
Denmark
Magazines
What magazine
[Files]
School Protocols
[Files] (No subfolders here yet because I dont have many of them, if it becomes too many I then sort in to subfolders)
Death Certificates
Just an example, If there becomes too many records in one folder and see and logical division I make subfolders. And use the Media Verify plugin to fix the link.
Folder structure doesnt tell me who is in the record, its rare for me to find files specifically by going through the folders manually. I know what people is in what record by looking in Gramps.
Personally, I would not manage to just have one folder, no matter how good the naming system was, it would still be very messy and lack structure for me. Just because how many records it becomes over time.