Thursday, July 14, 2016

History’s Future Depends on You - #TheWorldsRecords

FamilySearch Worldwide Indexing Event 2016I received the following announcement from FamilySearch:

From July 15-17, [2016] FamilySearch International and supporting organizations are coordinating the single largest gathering of volunteers online from around the world to help in the noble effort to save, and increase access to, the world’s genealogically significant historical records. With a target of 75,000 online volunteers for the weekend event and a stretch goal of more than 200,000, you and your network of friends and colleagues can make a real difference. Remember, every historic record tells the unique story of someone’s ancestor and helps make a personal connection. Until that record is easily discoverable online, that ancestor’s story and their place in the family tree, remains untold.

Please visit https://familysearch.org/worldsrecords for information on the world indexing event and how you can participate this weekend.

If you’ve ever used the historical records on FamilySearch.org, now’s your chance to pay back other volunteers who made that possible. If you haven’t, now’s your chance to pay it forward. Index some records you think others—or even yourself—will find helpful. If nothing else, check out the cute, interactive animation found on https://familysearch.org/worldsrecords. Look down the page for this graphic:

FamilySearch 2016 Indexing Event: History's future depends on you!

3 comments:

  1. I agree with the premise that is being advertised as a way to entice budding genealogy students to get their feet wet while giving to a world wide effort. It all sounds SO MAGNANIMOUS. When I first heard about this extensive valiant effort being proposed by Family Search it reminded me of the fiasco of the indexing I participated in about 2 years ago. My hope is that the technical problems have been addressed and resolved. The frustrations and irritations were expressed within my experienced genealogy society and private group. One of the greatest problems brought up was lack of sufficient training of volunteers. And due to that element the data was often compromised, as you recently presented in your two postings about 'multigenerational copies with abundant errors ' often making the information worthless. There is enough of that already happening within the LDS community of forced genealogical research requisite. Therefore, I wish all of those mighty innocent volunteers who will be following their leaders over the cliff into the abyss of scrambled accumulation of data heaped to the sky.

    ReplyDelete
  2. I agree with the premise that is being advertised as a way to entice budding genealogy students to get their feet wet while giving to a world wide effort. It all sounds SO MAGNANIMOUS. When I first heard about this extensive valiant effort being proposed by Family Search it reminded me of the fiasco of the indexing I participated in about 2 years ago. My hope is that the technical problems have been addressed and resolved. The frustrations and irritations were expressed within my experienced genealogy society and private group. One of the greatest problems brought up was lack of sufficient training of volunteers. And due to that element the data was often compromised, as you recently presented in your two postings about 'multigenerational copies with abundant errors ' often making the information worthless. There is enough of that already happening within the LDS community of forced genealogical research requisite. Therefore, I wish all of those mighty innocent volunteers who will be following their leaders over the cliff into the abyss of scrambled accumulation of data heaped to the sky.

    ReplyDelete
  3. I participated in this marathon event, and it was a lot of fun, really. I enjoy deciphering old records and now will be much more patient with the misspellings, anomalies, discrepancies, etc. I find online in my own family's records. I wrote about my experience on my website today, if you want to know what one volunteer "learned." vweisfeld.com/?p=5908 Enjoy!

    ReplyDelete

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