Wednesday, September 3, 2014

Indexing

  Recently my huby and I were discussing family history with a friend who is from the Caribbean. He was telling us that there is no way for him to work on finding his ancestors because there are no records from his country online. My husband wanted to see if that was correct and in the process he found out that the records are not searchable yet but they are on their way. This is thanks to a process called indexing.
  "Indexing is the process of creating indexes for record collections.  Having indexes allows researchers to more quickly find records for specific individuals; without them, researchers might have to look through hundreds or thousands of records to locate an individual record." (FamilySearch.org)
  The reason we can learn about our family history from the comfort of our homes is because individuals, mostly volunteers, have done the indexing required to create the databases that we use to search for our ancestors.
  If you are unable to find information about your family it would be worth considering becoming an indexing volunteer. You can do this several ways. The first method I would recommend is through Family Search. They have an amazing setup and will teach you step by step how to do it. Another method is helping with the Find A Grave project. If there is a cemetery near you that they don't have in their database you can take photos of the headstones. You then upload the photos and enter the information on the headstone and where it was located.
   There is something for everyone when it comes to family history.




 ( I didn't make this video it is from lds.org)
https://www.lds.org/media-library/video/2013-03-01-indexing-is-vital?lang=eng



No comments:

Post a Comment