Friday, September 10, 2010

What's coming from the Ancestry.com World Archives Project?

Ancestry.com has an active indexing project running called the Ancestry.com World Archives Project. Many volunteers are indexing records from datasets imaged by Ancestry.com at archives and repositories, and by volunteers at genealogical and historical societies.

The Dashboard for the World Archives Project is updated periodically. It lists databases in four categories:

* Available Projects - The "Available" project list means that a project is available for download for keying or arbitration.

* Not Available Projects - The "Unavailable" project list contains projects that aren’t available for keying or arbitration because all of the image sets have been checked out. Projects on this list may re-appear on the Available list as image sets are rejected or expire without being keyed.

* In Processing Projects - contains projects that have completed keying and arbitration by the community. These projects are now being worked on by the Ancestry team to prepare the indexes and images to go live on the site as searchable, indexed databases.

* Live Projects -- The "Live" project list contains links to all projects keyed by the World Archives contributors that are live and searchable on the site.

The important one for researchers anxious for new databases is the In Processing list of projects. The ones on the list today include:

* Australia Historical Postcards
* California Biographical Collection - Burial Records
* California Library Motion Picture Studio Directories
* California, San Diego County Burial Permits, 1913-1919
* California, San Diego Mortuary Records, 1914-1921
* Canada Historical Postcards (Les Cartes Postales du Canada )
* Cartoline storiche d'Italia (Italy Historical Postcards)
* Chalmers' Biographical Dictionary
* Fife, Scotland, Voters Lists, 1832-1894
* Gamla vykort å Sverige (Sweden Historical Postcards)


* Historic Postcards - US (Batch 5)
* Historic Postcards - US (Batch 6)
* London, England, Land Tax Valuations, 1910
* Lorain County, Ohio, City Directories, 1903-1960
* Lübeck Volkszählung 1845 (Lübeck Census 1845)
* Lübeck Volkszählung 1851 (Lübeck Census 1851)
* Lübeck Volkszählung 1857 (Lübeck Census 1857)
* Michigan Passenger and Crew Lists, 1902-1954
* New South Wales, Australia, Depasturing Licences, 1837-1851
* New South Wales, Australia, Entrance Books for the Vernon and the Sobraon, 1867-1911

* Ohio State Directories, 1902-1933
* Österreichische Historische Postkarten (Austria Historical Postcards)
* Slave Ads and Abstracts from a Natchez, MS newspaper, 1823-1849
* Slave Manifests Filed at New Orleans, Louisiana, 1807-1860
* Slave Narratives: A Folk History of Slavery in the United States From Interviews with Former Slaves, 1936-1938
* Tarjetas Postales Antiguas de Mexico (Mexico Historical Postcards)
* Testing - 31054TST
* TESTING Indentures of Apprenticeship, DC, 1801-1811
* TESTING Jacksonville, Florida Area City Directories
* TESTING Pennsylvania, U.S. Naturalization Records - Original Documents, 1795-1972


* U.S. Naturalization Originals - MD and VA, 1906-1930
* UK, Prison Hulk Registers and Letter Books, 1802-1849
* United Kingdom & Ireland Historical Postcards
* Verbano-Cusio-Ossola, Piemonte, Italia: Registri di Matrimonio e Morte, 1866-1937 (Italy: Marriage and Death Records)

The links for these databases go to an Ancestry.com Wiki page describing the dataset being indexed and available for searching.

Keeping track of the databases that are on these lists can help researchers determine what may be coming in future weeks or months on Ancestry.com. Of course, these projects don't reflect databases that are being imaged and indexed by Ancestry.com with paid employees or archivists.

2 comments:

James Tanner said...

Thanks for the update. I have used the Ancestry.com Wiki a number of times.

Anonymous said...

Thanks for the update, found a few records today that I have been searching a long time for!