I have been a FamilySearch Indexer for a few years, off andon. I must admit I don’t consistently takeadvantage of the opportunity to index records. Yes, I see this as more of help to me and my record education than whatit does for the genealogical community.
Randy Seaver posted his weekly Saturday Night Genealogy Fun challenge to index a couple ofbatches. I took him up on it and spentmost of the day today indexing. I forgothow fun and educational it was!It is really easy toget started. All you need is a FamilySearch account (available free),download the software and start indexing! There is even a test driveyou can take to see how it works before you sign up. There is no commitment tohow much you index. You can do as littleor as much as you want. Each batch willtake approximately 30-60 minutes to complete.
Become and indexer and receive the following benefits:
- Practice interpreting different styles ofhandwriting.
- Learning about records collection you didn’tknow about
- Understanding what additional information isavailable on the original records as opposed to just the indexed fields
- The more you index, the more you learn!
The1940 U.S. CensusCommunity Project is reaching out to the community to become familiar withthe indexing process so that when the 1940 U.S. Census is released on April 2,2012, we can get to work and start indexing these wonderful documents! Untilthey are indexed, typing name in a search field will not find any results. Visit the 1940 U.S. Census Community Project website to learn even more!
