Monday, July 21, 2008

What is FamilySearch Indexing Working On?

We all know that the LDS FamilySearch Indexing project is using thousands of volunteer indexers to generate indexes to digitized images of records, and putting completed image collections and indexes on the FamilySearch Record Search site (at http://pilot.familysearch.org/recordsearch/start.html).

What are the FamilySearch indexers currently working on? I went looking on www.FamilySearchIndexing.org and found the Current Projects list here. I won't list them all. The interesting items are the ones being indexed by non-LDS organizations like the Indiana Genealogical Society, Ohio Genealogical Society, Arkansas Genealogical Society, and the Genealogical Association of Nova Scotia.

I'm looking forward to the indexes and images for the 1920 United States Census, the Cook County (IL) Birth Certificates, the Philadelphia Marriage Indexes 1881-1951, and the Wisconsin State Censuses (1855, 1875, 1885, 1895, 1905).

What are the FamilySearch Indexers going to be working on in the near future? The Upcoming Projects list is here. The non-LDS organizations listed include the California Genealogical Society and Library, Indiana Genealogical Society, Ohio Genealogical Society and New England Historical and Genealogical Society.

On the Upcoming list, I'm looking forward to the Massachusetts Death Records 1906-1015 and the New Hampshire Early Births and Deaths to 1900. There are still many states on this list for the 1870 census and many Mexican states for the 1930 census.

The Complete Projects list is here. I don't know how up-to-date any of these lists are.

How can you and I help? We can join the legions of researchers who volunteer to do the indexing. You can sign up here.

Do you and your local society want to participate in an indexing project? I couldn't find a place to do this on the FSI site other than the indexing@familysearch.org email address. If someone knows how a society gets involved in this, I would appreciate knowing about it.

1 comment:

Kathryn Doyle said...

Hey Randy,
You were a bit too fast! The California Genealogical Society project went from "Upcoming" to "Current" just this morning. It is an exciting collection of thousands of San Francisco mortuary records that survived the 1906 earthquake and fire - some dating back to 1850.