The World Archives Project (WAP) is Ancestry.com’s community indexing program. In a recent update, Ancestry.com announced that in the past four years the project has completed 170 projects. They have published 130 databases with indexes available for free searching on Ancestry. Viewing images still requires an Ancestry subscription.
There are currently 26 projects available for indexing. Among these are California Railroad Employment Records, 1862-1950; Kansas, City and County Census, 1919-1978; Liverpool, United Kingdom, Crew Lists 1860-1919; Pavia, Lombardia, Italia: Registri di Matrimonio, 1866-1937 (Registers of Marriage); and USHMM Lodz, Poland, Vital Records of Jews in the Lodz Ghetto, 1939-1944.
In the update, Ancestry announced that a Mac version of the indexing software is now available. Active contributors are eligible for Ancestry subscription discounts. Active contributors are those that index or arbitrate 900 or more records in a rolling 90 day period. Active contributors can also see the images from WAP projects, so long as Ancestry has permission to publish the images. Some projects, such as those with the United States Holocaust Memorial Museum call for image publication on the partner website.
I like the way Ancestry posts project statuses and recognizes their top indexers:
For my stories on the introduction of the WAP back in 2008, see
Ancestry gets free indexing and then doesn't even let the indexers view the images unless they have an Ancestry account. It's nice that they give active indexers a discount for an Ancestry subscription, and I like that Ancestry allows the indexes they get for free to be searched for no charge, but withholding the images seems a little chintzy to me. I used to index for the Ancestry WAP, but I've switched to FamilySearch where all indexed material, including images, is free to all.
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