By using two different kinds of tabs in the notebook, it is very easy to differentiate between your Family Group Records, which are numbered clear tabs (if you are buying your own tabs and packages of eight tabs to a package, or buff tabs if you are buying acid free archival quality tabs as shown in the illustration below), and your lists, Pedigree Charts, and indices, which are labeled behind colored tabs (if you are buying just a few tabs or beige tabs if you are using the acid free archival quality tabs as shown in the illustration below).

Also, as you begin to collect materials that do not logically fit in behind your Family Group Records because they apply to several families, you will put together colored (or beige) tabs to separate various families and various locality notes.

These materials will be kept in the very back of your notebook. As that first notebook fills up, just move these miscellaneous materials to the back of the next notebook, or make them a notebook of their own. We want to keep them separated from the colored (or beige) tabs in the front for ease in locating information.

The "Your Turn" assignment in this chapter asks you to open your notebook and assemble the dividers. If you are still having problems visualizing this concept, go to www.fileyourpapers.com for assistance. Since that site has been loaded with images, it will help you catch the vision of what we are trying to accomplish, and you will be lead to places where you may purchase the tabs already prenumbered (shown as buff above), for cheaper than you can find them anywhere.

Remember the caution that was given. Do not try to outsmart your computer program by trying to force these numbers to match a particular surname. Just file the Family Group Record you have printed behind the numbered tab to which it applies. Read instructions for knowing how to turn on and off the MRIN (also called Family Group Record) numbers. Family group 3 would be filed behind tab 3.

The purpose of your Family History Archival Notebook is to store and retrieve information speedily. It is not the final product you are going to make for your family. That final product will be produced from your computer program later when you have a particular aspect of the family completed to a specific point. The main purpose of using a genealogy computer software program at the beginning is to prove relationships, record sources and evidence, and keep information together. The purpose at this point is not to publish or set up your people for publishing. That will be done much easier later, using this same data.

You will have many more numbered tabs than subject and surname tabs. Many people, when they begin to file their materials, try to file the documents in alphabetical order, rather than by these MRIN numbers. These beginners are soon lost, as they begin to locate hundreds of new families and many have variant name spellings. They often don't know where to look.

If your printouts do not have identification numbers on them, go back and check your preferences options. You may have turned the numbers off when you first set up your program, or you may have "suppressed them" in your printing options.