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Saturday, 2 August 2014

International Collaboration


Last month I wrote of my intention to join the Familysearch Worldwide Indexing Event, this is a followup post. 

 “Alone we can do so little; together we can do so much” - Helen Keller. 

I am rather proud of the new badge (right) that my personal blog is wearing. Although I am pleased to have made a small contribution to the Familysearch Worldwide Indexing Event I am proud because the Worldwide event highlighted the benefits of collaboration in the genealogy and family history sphere. Just as our blog Worldwide Genealogy brings together genealogists from around the world whose individual contributions combine to produce this blog as a resource for the Worldwide genealogy community the Worldwide Indexing Event brought together genealogists from around the workd to index digital resources from Familysearch.

The Familysearch blog reports that 66,511 indexers collaborated in this event and "While the focus for this challenge was on the total number of participants, a tremendous amount of indexing and arbitration work was accomplished as well. Here are the results for the number of records indexed and arbitrated.
Indexed: 4,682,746
Arbitrated: 941,932
Total Records Processed: 5.7 million"
If you have ever trawled through pages of unindexed Familysearch digital images you will appreciate the value of having more than 5 million new records indexed.

 What made this event even more special for me was another collaborative effort, a Google Hangout on Air - GeneaSleepOver: Worldwide Indexing Event,  spearheaded by DearMyrtle and her Cousin Russ Worthington. (I will add links to the four Youtube videos from this event to the bottom of this post.)
I listened to and chatted to the hosts Myrt and Russ and other panelists from the US and UK while I indexed my few batches, at one stage the camera was directed to my computer screen as I worked on indexing one of my batches. That was quite a challenge for a newbie indexer. Myrt had also asked me to join and talk aboout a topic of my choosing, I elected to chat about Australian Royalty - those people who have and are proud of their convict ancestry. 

 I watched and listened to the Hangout for around 8 hours of the 24, I was on the panel at the beginning and rejoined for the end. I was thrilled to chat with fellow Worldwide Genealogy bloggers, young Australian genealogist and new indexing volunteer Caitlin Gow and Hilary Gadsby from Wales who has blogged about her indexing experience.

  In Australia we talk about the Tyranny of Distance, being able to participate in the Hangout while participating in the Worldwide Indexing Event broke down the barrier of isolation we sometimes feel in Australia. Thanks to Myrt and Russ for organising this event.



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4 comments:

  1. DearMYRTLE2 August 2014 at 17:22

    Thanks for the shout out, Caitlin. It was a joy to have you join the panel during the GeneaSleepOver. By indexing part of each hour, we encouraged people to participate in the FamilySearch Worldwide Indexing Event in new ways.

    Some had never indexed before but gave it a try, realizing it was not hard and is actually fun. Others hadn't indexed for years but decided getting back into it is a marvelous way to "pay it forward."

    All in all, except for some sleep eyes, a grand time was had by all.

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  2. Cousin Russ2 August 2014 at 19:44

    Caitlin,

    Thank you for joining us, sharing your story, and your screen. Not to mention the Indexing that you did. That was awesome.

    Thanks for being part of the DearMYRTLE community and sharing your experience.

    Russ

    ReplyDelete
  3. Alex Daw3 August 2014 at 02:34

    Hi Jill - That Worldwide Indexing Event/Hangout was awesome. It's just amazing what we can all do when we work together. Great blog post.

    ReplyDelete
  4. GeniAus4 August 2014 at 13:43

    Thanks for the comments. It was a fabulous exercise - we had fun, did a spot of learning and accomplished heaps.

    ReplyDelete

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World Wide Genealogy Team