Citation of privately held materials affected by filing structure

Dear Editor;

The EE section 3.24 on citing "Privately held materials" is fairly clear to me, but raises a few interesting questions about citing documents within ones own filing structure.

  1. Can you provide a bit of guidance on how to cite the location of documents within family collections?
    I note that some EE examples appear to arrange the materials in fonds (eg. "Block Family Collection"). But, I also note that the file structure of the family fonds does not appear to be mentioned. I have a very large collection of personally held materials, as a result of bequests from a large number of relatives. Without further detail on the location of individual records, it may be difficult for anyone (even myself) to locate them.
  2. If you have some words of wisdom on the filing structure of family fonds, to make citing easier, it would be appreciated.
    The concept of storing material in fonds appears to be foreign to most amateur genealogical filing systems. These systems usually attempt to store all material withing a tree structure based upon family groups. Doing this, for inherited material, might decrease the ability to assess the information in the context of the person from whom the collection originated.

Submitted byEEon Tue, 01/29/2019 - 21:36

History-Hunter, the organization of personal files is an issue that EE does not get into. I'll post a query to EE's Facebook page and see if we can generate suggestions for you.