Indexing: Thinking About Your Folks (6-7-2013)

Indexing: Thinking About Your Folks

Joe Stay

The United States is a country with a rich heritage of hobbies.  Baseball is its famous pastime.  You make think of others—hunting, fishing, football, shopping.  The list goes on.  One thing you tend not to think of is family history.

                And yet a recent survey shows that it is the second most popular hobby in the nation.

                Why the interest in family history?  What is so fascinating about it?  Why has the U.S. General Surgeon, as of 2004, declared Thanksgiving as National Family History Day?

                Perhaps it comes about through the search for meaning, the search for identity, the proverbial little orphan Annies racing to find their heritage, the gazing in one’s own reflection and whispering, “Who am I?” but any way you want to explain it, the drive for family history research is indeed on the rise.  One of the ways to work on family history is through the online database FamilySearch, “a nonprofit organization established by the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints,” according to its home page.  Here, you and other volunteers can participate in the practice known as “indexing.”

                Indexing constitutes the organizing and arranging of individual records from all over.  According to the FamilySearch website, “The documents are drawn primarily from a collection of 2.4 million rolls of microfilm containing photographic images of historical documents from 110 countries and principalities. The documents include census records, birth and death certificates, marriage licenses, military and property records, and other vital records maintained by local, state, and national government.”

Elder Miller, a service missionary for the LDS church who works in the Family History Center on the Brigham Young University-Idaho campus, is one of many volunteers that not only participates in indexing, but offers help to anyone looking to get into it.  In helping to get you started, he would take you through the indexing process for a hands-on experience.

                First, you log onto www.familysearch.org and sign up for an account.  The site asks for a simple username and password, after which it takes you to a page where you may download the free software whereby you can access the indexing files.  It is a quick, safe download that will take you right to the program’s Setup.  You are free to choose the various languages in which the names may appear and upon finishing, the program opens right up and you may begin anytime.

                Now that the program is open, to begin indexing you hit the button in the top left labeled “Download Batch.”  A window with various Project titles will appear, and you are free to choose whichever you want to index.  For instance, you may receive Projects with such titles as “US, Iowa—1905 State Census” or “Canada, Quebec—1911 Recensement”.  In the description the Iowa batch, it will say “English—1905” and for the Quebec batch it will say “French—1911”.  Say you don’t speak French and you aren’t confident in your ability to accurately read French documents.  In that case, you can click on the Iowa batch and be on your merry way.

                The next screen that comes up has a black and white scan of a document at the top.  It can be anything from a Census record to a death certificate, but in the Project titles the type of document will be specified.  At the bottom half of the screen there are a number of different fields for one to fill out based on the information given on the document.  In the bottom right corner there is a box reserved for instructions on every step of the indexing process.

After indicating the state of each of the documents in the batch (whether it be normal, blank, a duplicate, an image with no extractable data, or an unreadable image) in the bottom left hand corner under the “Header Data” tab, you click on the “Table Entry” tab and begin filling out the specified fields.

The program will highlight the different parts of the document on which you are working to help you locate each field.  It will ask you for the data of such things as the certificate number, the given and surnames of the people indicated, the place of birth, information on the parents, etc. all depending on which type of document you are indexing.

                As you begin indexing, you will discover something that many—including Elder Miller—have discovered.  You will find that some of the documents are quite the challenge to read.  Remember that the images on the screen are scans from microfilm, a now outdated technology that can be compared as the VHS of movies.  You are not guaranteed to get perfect handwriting on the original recorder’s part either.  Do not get discouraged.  If you are unsure of a name or a place, try researching your different possibilities online.  If you are still left clueless as to what has been written, give it your best shot if it is under a required field such as a given or surname, or do as the instructions tell you, and skip it or mark it blank.

                Indexing is a method of bridging the gap between the data collected with older technology and the new system that is used these days.  According to the FamilySearch website, its purpose is “to create searchable digital indexes for scanned images of historical documents.”  The information transferred by volunteers like you from the microfilm images to the FamilySearch database is used for genealogical and family history research.

According to a 2005 poll conducted by Market Strategies, Inc., 73 percent of Americans are interested in learning about their family history.  A more recent survey, according to the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services website, shows that 96 percent of Americans know that keeping a family history is important.

So make the country’s second most popular hobby yours as well.  The records of millions that have gone before lie at your fingertips, ready to go digital.  In the words of little orphan Annie:  “Close your eyes, think about your folks.”