A question came up about census records on the internet. Thank you very
much for that question.
There are two ways to get a census record onto the internet: 1.
Volunteer transcription and 2. Census Image donation (can go hand in hand
with volunteer transcription). I have volunteered to transcribe the 1850
census. As some of you may have noticed, I haven't done too much with it
lately because life is interfering (the military would not be happy if they
knew I was spending my time doing that instead of my job!), but I will get
it all online eventually, because the version I have is different, and in
some cases more informative than the microfilm version (don't ask me why, I
don't know). Anybody can get a copy of a census microfilm from their local
Library (interlibrary loan) or LDS (for about $9 for indefinite loan if I
remember correctly) and transcribe it for the Project on a volunteer basis.
It would actually be very much appreciated. There is an alternative. There
are several companies that offer CD's of US Census records. They actually
scan the census records and burn them into the CD's and sell the CD's.
Which leads to...
The second method of getting a census online is by "Census Image
donation." At least one (maybe more) of the companies who will make CD
copies of census records will donate a copy of that census to the USGenWeb
Archives. To my knowledge there are 4 companies that make census CD's. The
best known of these is S-K Publications. They will not only make the census
CD. They donate a copy of that census to the Archives Project. Plus, all
further copies of the CD's are relatively inexpensive. If I am not mistaken
they also make census books out of these images. The URL's for the 4
companies that I am aware of that offer this CD Census service are:
1.
http://www.skpub.com/ Sample image:
http://www.skpub.com/genie/CensusSample.html
2.
http://members.tripod.com/~sweetblueroses/index.html Sample image:
http://members.tripod.com/~sweetblueroses/sample.html
3.
http://www.galstar.com/~censusvu/ (I have one of their CD's. It's not
too bad.)
4.
http://www.allcensus.com/ (No ideas about quality of image)
Each has widely varying prices (information available on their websites).
But as they say, you get what you pay for. If anybody else is aware of a
company that offers this service, please let me know so I can add them to my
list. As you can tell, I've been shopping around.
If anybody is willing to transcribe census records from either
microfilm, CD, or census image book, please let Judy or me know so we can
try to coordinate any potential duplication of work out of the system. And
don't forget that there are other records out there that are not available
online that would be nice to have.
Thank you,
Patrick Hays