Archives.com is NARA Partner to Host 1940 U.S. Census Images

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Archives.com announced today that they will be the partner of the National Archives (NARA) to host the 1940 U.S. Census images.  Genea-Musings readers will recall previous posts about the NARA Request for Proposal to host the census images.

The Archives.com announcement is on the Archives.com blog, titled Archives.com Partners with the National Archives to Unveil the 1940 Census.  Archives.com CEO Matthew Monahan said:

"We are thrilled to have the opportunity to participate in this historic moment and demonstrate our ongoing commitment to the advancement of online genealogy research. Access to 1940 Census records will allow researchers to discover new family members and previously unknown connections to the past. We're happy to have the opportunity to facilitate the discovery of these records, which document over 130 million U.S. residents, more than any previous U.S. Census."

More details:

"The 1940 Census will be available to the public April 2, 2012 at 9:00 AM (Eastern Daylight Time) on a new website created in collaboration between Archives.com and the National Archives. The collection will consist of 3.8 million images that the National Archives scanned from over four thousand rolls of microfilm. Public access to the images will not require payment or registration, and will be available to any person with internet access. The name and web address of the website will be announced at a later date.

"Chief Digital Access Strategist for the National Archives Pamela Wright notes, 'The importance of the 1940 Census cannot be underestimated. At the National Archives, we have been preparing for the launch of these records for years. We are working closely with Inflection to ensure researchers will be able to search the 1940 Census when it opens next year.' At launch, researchers will be able to search the 1940 Census by address, Enumeration District (ED), and geographic location. Researchers will be able to browse images by ED number directly, or use address or geographic information to locate the appropriate census schedule." 

Archives.com has an information page about the 1940 U.S. Census posted at http://www.archives.com/1940census.

Readers should understand that this announcement addresses only the free access of the public to the 1940 U.S. Census images.  There will NOT be an every name index available on 2 April 1940.  Several organizations, presumably including Archives.com, FamilySearch, Ancestry.com, and perhaps other organizations, will create an every-name index after the census images are available. 

According to the email I received, Julie Hill of Archives.com is the Project Manager for their company for this effort.  Congratulations to Julie and Archives.com for this significant addition to the genealogy research world!

The Steve Morse One-Step site has a utility called "How to Access the 1940 Census in One Step" at at: http://stevemorse.org/census/quiz.php.   Researchers can use this access tool, and then search the census images on the Archives.com website (or other sites with the images), for the specific census page with their family of interest.