Monday, July 14, 2014

Worldwide Indexing Day

FamilySearch will run its next ‘worldwide indexing day’ on Monday July 21. This has been held for the past few years and is intended to inspire many to start indexing, while also prompting existing indexers to do a little more (at least on that day). FamilySearch, on average adds about 500,000 images to their website a week, and through their current volunteer indexers they get about a million entries indexed in the same timeframe. A single scanned image might have one name on it, or it might have fifty names on it – it simply depends on the type of document, so you’ll see that there’s a whole lot of indexing that needs doing. Worldwide indexing day runs for 24 hours and starts on Sunday July 20, 6pm MDT time in the US, which for us here in Australia translates to Monday July 21, 10am (AEST).

If you are interested in indexing, you don’t have to wait to the last minute to get involved. You can get started right away. Go to https://FamilySearch.org/indexing and find a project that interests you and get involved. Do some practicing before the July 21, 2014 Indexing Event.

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First World War Graves

The Commonwealth War Graves Commission has just launched two new websites to make it easier for families to find relatives killed in the first world war, including the release of 300,000 original documents. The documents include details of personal headstone inscriptions, date of death, rank, and regiment. Some will give details of the journey of the deceased to their final resting place. They can be seen on the CWCG website. The commission's new Discover 14-18 microsite is designed to enable the public to visit the memorial sites more easily. The site will also feature a timeline and calendar of events and major battles of the first world war. The commission is responsible for marking and caring for more than 1.7m war graves. It operates in over 23,000 locations in 153 countries across all continents except for Antarctica.