NGS Pre-Conference Sessions

The NGS Conference pre-sessions are well worth an extra day or two. As a brief re-cap of the activities I attended on Tuesday, I will highlight some tidbits learned.

#LibrariansDay

This yearly staple for librarians who handle genealogical collections was held in the gorgeous Library of Virginia. Our opening session featured Leslie Anderson from the Alexandria Library as she covered their transcription project: Virginia Slave Births Index, 1853-1862. The project was originally the child of the WPA back in the 1930s. However, the microfilm copies were atrocious and needed to be re-processed. As a labor of love, they re-transcribed the records and have published them in a book available throughHeritageBooks.com

We were also treated to sessions about re-thinking the contents of your genealogy vertical files, Family Search Wiki, Proquest products, and an exploration of the Civile War Legacy Project based out of the Library of Virginia. This project is focused on digitizing personal Civil War collections throughout the state. If you live in Virginia, be on the look out for a scanning date in your area! They are bringing their digitization equipment to a town near you!

Blogger Dinner Presented by Family Search:

At the NGS blogger dinner last night, Family Search let us in on a few new developments.

They have added more content to their Civil War records to their collections.

Their indexing software is moving to a browser based model, which means you will no longer have to download software in order to participate in indexing projects. 

Since mobile applications are evermore important to users, FS is developing more in-depth mobile apps for both platforms. If you would like to test their new mobile apps, just send your name and operating system (iOS or Android) to: fs-mobile@familysearch.org

The obituary indexing project is their biggest project at present. On July 21-22, they will be hosting another crowd sourcing indexing event to get 20,000 users indexing during a 24 hour period. Be on the look out for announcements about that upcoming fun.

The obituary indexing project is extremely large....when finished, they will be four times as large as the 1940 census! 

That's it for the moment...more to come!

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Time to Party Like it's 1940!!

Ok, so that doesn't have the same ring to it as 1999, but still, I think I've partied harder for the 1940 Census than I ever did to ring in the new millennium! (Geek confession #57) For those of us who are die-hard Kentucky fans, that was certainly true as the Census was released in the morning, followed by the Wildcats winning the championship that night! Despite us being almost three weeks into the Census fun, I don't see the partying slowing down very much! Just last Saturday we had a wonderful celebration at the Kentucky Historical Society. For the KGS/KHS 2nd Saturday Program we explored the Census in all of its glory: Introduction, Instruction & Celebration. The party atmosphere was heightened as we had over 120 folks pre-register for the event - one of the largest crowds we've had in a while!

Much of our content focused on how to view and browse the images across the various web sites, followed by how to find your needed Enumeration Districts. In the afternoon, we covered a few case studies to demonstrate how to put the learned morning information to use. We wrapped things up with a small session on indexing. Folks had some really good questions and we had a moment of trivia speed bump: When were Enumeration District numbers first used? The answer from the audience was 1880 - Thanks Jim! Several people had already dove headlong into the Census browsing prior to the event, but they were encountering enough of a continued challenge to really understand the importance of an index! As of right now, Kentucky has 14 official Societies or Groups that are administrating indexing efforts in their areas. I am an administrator for the KHS group. If you would like to join a group for your state, just visit the1940census.com and look at the societies map. Hovering over the states will pop up a window listing the groups and their web information to get hooked up.

So, what did we do once we were buzzed on all that Census info? We loaded up on some sugary sweet cake that had the 1940 Census Community Project logo in the center. No one seemed to mind that the place looked a bit like the 4th of July in April....we all had a great time....and since Kentucky had just been released for indexing the day before, people were ready to get out there and start some turbo indexing! So far, our little KHS group of about 50 people is averaging 15,000 names per week! Before I head out for some more indexing (which btw, has made me a terrible blogger these days), I would like to give a shout out to Archives.com. They were kind enough to send us some lovely free memberships for door prizes!

Bye for now, and happy indexing!

C