Worldwide Indexing

Are You An Indexer?

This week Family Search is encouraging as many as possible to join their indexers and make it easier for us to find the records we are looking for, you can find out more and become an indexer here.

I joined the indexers at Family Search in June last year to help contribute to the event they held in July 2014. This year they have spread the event to a week and are encouraging as many as possible to index. Currently they are well short of the target and I would encourage every member of the genealogy community, with access to a computer and the internet, to join in with this, to show how important the indexes are in assisting our research.

If you would like to see what is involved with indexing DearMYRTLE has been doing some hangouts this week which are available at her YouTube Channel or to view the comments from viewers and/or make some of your own, as well as watching the recording join her community at Google+.

There will be a mention in the hangout today and there is one final hangout planned for tomorrow, if you need to ask any questions of a friendly bunch of indexers. Here is the timetable of hangouts.

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.

GeneaSleepOver: Worldwide Indexing Event - Video (a):



GeneaSleepOver: Worldwide Indexing Event - Video (b):


GeneaSleepOver: Worldwide Indexing Event - Video (c):



GeneaSleepOver: Worldwide Indexing Event - Video (d):