Friday, January 7, 2011

More News about the 1940 U.S. Census Release

Longtime readers of Genea-Musings will recall that I reported on Joel Weintraub's  presentation to the San Diego Genealiogical Society about the 1940 Census release in February 2009 (see Joel Weintraub at SDGS on "Preparing for the 1940 Census") and provided more information to my readers in November 2009 in 1940 U.S. Federal Census Information.

Dick Eastman's post on Wednesday, NARA to Release 1940 Census Records?, noted a Federal News Radio report (see http://www.federalnewsradio.com/?nid=35&sid=2222412) and wondered if the 1940 census would be released to the National Archives (NARA) web site.

Joel Weintraub commented on Dick's post, noting that:

"For the most recent formal information about the 1940 census and NARA... I suggest readers refer to a meeting on the 1940 census hosted by NARA last fall ....http://www.archives.gov/ncast/news/events/1940-census.html
and look at the Powerpoint Presentations contained in the above site."

Rebecca Warlow of the National Archives also commented on Dick's post, noting that:

"The sentence from Federal News Radio story, referred to in the blog post above, was missing a few key words. NARA will make the digitized copies of the 1940 Census population schedules available to the public, free of charge, on April 2, 2012 through our new Online Public Access search (http://www.archives.gov/research/search/)."

That clarifies the issue, I think.

The $64,000 questions then become:

* Who will index these records?
*  Will NARA permit an early indexing (before April 2012) of these records by a commercial or non-profit vendor?
*  Will NARA permit commercial or non-profit vendors to put the 1940 census images on the vendor site or will researchers be driven by the indexes to the NARA site?

What other questions, and answers, do we have?

1 comment:

Charles said...

NARA is going to release the ED maps before the April 2012, so you can find your people before any of the 1940 census is indexed if you know where they were living. I had found all four grandparents, my parents, and several uncles and aunts in the 1930 census weeks before any index appeared.