I had seen a PowerPoint presentation saved in pdf format given at the 2005 FGS Conference announcing the plan to digitize all the records preserved in the Granite Mountain.
http://www.familysearch.org/eng/home/News/frameset_news.asp?PAGE=Press/2005-9-9_FGS_Presentations.asp
Quite an ambitious project but what amazing possibilities it projected!
I signed up and started indexing census records along with a growing number of other volunteers throughout the country and before long throughout the world.
It was simple, in fact much simpler than the old way we used to use to participate in the old Extraction program. This way your work is submitted directly to Salt Lake. They organize everything.
Back in 1998-1999 our Young Women had shown an interest in extracting records and we had had to contact Salt Lake and accepted the challenge to tackle records from Argentina. Some of our Young Women were studying Spanish but for most of us – and even for them – it was a challenge to deal with the handwriting, let alone the Spanish.
We received a microfilm that had to be divided up, into batches that would not be overwhelming and organized these batches into microfilm indexers and data encoders. We also had to prepare a sample record so that those who were taking the information off the original records could find their way.
And because this was part of a special Laurel project we had to keep track of the hours spent on all this.
The records were death records from Cordova, Argentina. There were a lot of infants in those records, and there were slaves too… This prompted me to try and contact someone in Argentina who could give us some background history on the records and the area. We were in such luck! The lady who answered our request was working on the original records and so she could even help us if the images were bad.
She explained that the Indians were protected by the Queen Isabella and could not be held as slaves. So the slaves mentioned were African slaves. More questions came up when we found slaves married to free people and we learned that a child always took on its mother’s status. So if the mother was a slave, even though the father was free, the child was deemed a slave. However if the mother was free and the father was a slave, the child was free. Slaves could also buy their freedom, in a very similar way that the Romans of old used to.
Yet we never saw the product of our work become available to all.
So the prospect of working together with so many other good people on a project that was going to make records accessible online had great appeal.
At the 2007 FGS Conference held in Fort Wayne, Indiana, I found out how to participate in a project that was and is much closer to my heart than the US census or Argentinean records. They had just opened an indexing project for Belgium. Since this project was still in its trial period, it was not listed among the projects people could pick a batch from. It required a special log in and the project manager had to give his ok.
To my disappointment the project only had records from Flanders but there were French ones as well as Dutch ones. I could find my way through the Dutch ones but felt much more comfortable with the French ones so I stuck to them.
Later that year I was called to serve as Stake Indexing director and I became an arbitrator.So I juggle 2 logins and wear 2 hats: a regular indexer with the Belgian project and an arbitrator/administrator for my stake.
I like arbitrating most of the time because it doesn’t take as much time to go through a batch but each project has special rules and it is important to read the project specific instructions.
Lately I have spent most of my time on the Antwerp Foreigners index. I index for the Belgian project and I arbitrate for the stake in the same group of records. I think there is a prerequisite to doing this work. It’s to have the ability to decipher old handwriting. The projects are in various languages too now and so it is better to stick to project in a tongue that is more than just familiar. You need to be fluent in the records’ language if you want to keep yourself from being frustrated. The words sometimes just jump right at you, but not always…
The trick with the Antwerp Foreigners Index is to first disable the highlight as it jumps right to the next page and does not take into consideration that there are 2 columns for each page.When I arbitrate these batches I sometimes find some half way done and it is obvious the highlight is the reason as only half the page is indexed, 30 names on the left and 30 names on the right.
When that happens, I have to return the batch to be reindexed by whichever indexer who didn’t complete the task fully. I suppose I could just check that the one indexer did the work right but I was told an arbitrator should not think or act as an indexer so to keep things the way they were intended to work, it is simpler to just return the batch so it can be completed.
Sometimes an indexer also needs to return a batch because the image is too light. At first I used my Ancestry.com subscription to see if there was not a better copy of the image that I might be able to read its content but I was told this was not a good idea as poor images would end up online with the index and would not be of great value. By returning the batch and signifying the image is of poor quality, the indexer ensures that the image is retaken.
I love the site where the product of our work is being deposited: http://www.familysearchlabs.org/
Click on “Record Search”
In fact you can access it directly from http://www.familysearch.org/. Just hover over “Search” and you will have the option to click on “Record Search”
The work I do with the Belgian Project is only tallied by and for that project. There is a plan to consolidate IDs and add the totals, but until that time, the only number recorded for me as work for my stake is the one under which I serve as Stake Indexing director.
We do have indexers but I am still a one-man band as no assistants have been called to help with training indexers or helping with increasing the number of indexers.
I have asked several times to no avail. If I had less worries with my family I would probably approach local groups but the timing is all wrong for me so… I am waiting for the local leadership to step up to the plate and do something. When things calm down for me, we’ll see…
Until then I’ll just keep indexing… It’s a very rewarding thing to do and sure beats playing games online!
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