Wednesday, February 29, 2012

1940 US Census Indexing: I Took The Plunge!

After seeing all the hoopla about volunteering to index the upcoming release of the 1940 US Census, I threw my insecurities out the window and signed up to go a-indexing! It took about ten minutes total to download the software app, watch the video, sign in to my FamilySearch account and give it a whirl. It's kinda fun.

My hesitation was that I'm still a newbie and have been known to screw up stuff now and again... OK, regularly. But all the big kids were singing its praises so I jumped on the bandwagon. (Too many metaphors there, but you know what I mean;)

The video is so simple and straightforward, even I could understand it! And then they give you a test batch to try out. If you make a mistake or get confused they help you.

I'm working on some birth records now for somewhere in Texas and it's so very moving to see these records and know that my keystrokes could lead to someone finding their ancestor. OK, I'm hooked.

Plus, I get to pick from a list of records I want to index. That's really nice. I took a look at some handwriting on records from the War of 1812 and I'm not there yet. But Texas births... I'm all over that!

It comes to you in little batches so I don't feel like I've got this gigantic job to to. It's just filler work for me. Do a couple every now and then. Writing this blog post is taking longer than the batch I just finished.

Yeah, I can do this indexing thing... and I bet you can too. To sign up to index the 1940 US Census, go to http://the1940census.com/

And to get all warmed up and try your hand at indexing, go to http://the1940census.com/getting-started/

Photo of the Day from my archive:

My GF, John Lee Kelly (1892 - 1969) and his mother,
Christiana Eckhart Kelly (1861 - 1932)
ca. 1910.

1 comment:

  1. Thank you for indexing. I think my reading skills have improved since I started a little over a year ago. I'm really looking forward to April 2.

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