This was posted on another maillist and thought it was quite interesting. I
had heard small tidbits abouto the project, but this gives a little more
information. (See article below.)
Paula
Waupaca County Coordinator
WIGenWeb Project
http://www.rootsweb.com/~wiwaupac/index.htm
Waushara County Coordinator
WIGenWeb Project
http://www.rootsweb.com/~wiwaush2/
Deseret Morning News, Saturday, September 30, 2006
A family history overhaul
By Carrie A. Moore
Deseret Morning News
Whether your LDS ancestors pulled a handcart across the Plains or you have
no
affiliation with The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints, there's a
wealth of information being processed for placement on the Internet
beginning
next year that can tie you to your family tree â free.
  Â
Thousands of Latter-day Saints in town for the church's 176th Semi-annual
General Conference, which begins at 10 a.m. today, know something about
their
ancestry because they've long been taught to know who their progenitors are.
But relatively few know all of what's now available to help fill out their
family tree, including archives that chronicle the early history of the LDS
Church in exacting â and often personal â detail.
And with a complete overhaul of the church's
FamilySearch.org Web site
planned for the months ahead, even those who have no experience researching
family
history will be able to "do something meaningful without having to learn
anything prior," according to Steve W. Anderson, online marketing manager
for
the
church's Family History department.
New online tools will allow novices to log on and â with a few mouse
clicks
â
pull up their family tree, with details about ancestors, of any faith or
none, that are part of the database. "You'll be able to attach images or
photos
to it, or something like a timeline of events. It will have all kind of
things
to make it a much richer resource."
Users will have their own login, allowing them to add information about
living people to their family tree if they so choose, though that
information
will
not be available for others to view in order to maintain privacy. Anderson
said there is some concern about the accuracy of allowing people to simply
add
information, but "if someone disagrees with your account of it, there will
be an
opportunity to put additional information or opinion there."
In addition to the redesigned Web site, the church is pushing forward with a
digitizing project that will eventually allow the images of such information
as census records, birth, death, marriage, tax and land records â now
contained
on its 2.4 million rolls of microfilm â to not only be placed online, but
to
be indexed in order to allow nearly instant access.
The project is estimated to take from five to 15 years to complete. After
that anyone looking for access to literally billions of individual documents
will
be able to search for them in minutes online. In the past, the only way to
access those records was to order a copy of the microfilm through the mail.
"We're trying to make the information much more accessible and also much
more
meaningful," Anderson said. "The Web has made us all a little
attention-challenged, yet we all flock to it. All that we're doing here with
online programs
and databases puts us right at the doorstep of a mountain of significant
change."
The church is currently working with thousands of volunteers worldwide to
help index the digitized records â many of them through state and local
genealogical societies. Public access to selected records that have been
both
digitized
and indexed is anticipated "fairly soon â definitely by next year," he
said.
Family History communications and planning manager Paul Nauta said the
indexing technology is "coming along nicely" at this point, and managers
will
begin
testing the indexing internally through church groups and with selected
genealogical societies nationally who have volunteers now working to index
records
that their memberships find valuable.
The project, dubbed "FamilySearch Indexing," is drawing growing interest
from
volunteers in a variety of areas. A demonstration of the new technology will
be featured at the Ogden Regional Family History Conference Oct. 6-7 at the
Eccles Conference Center during a presentation called "Opening the Granite
Mountain Vault." (For information, see
www.myancestorsfound.com/NorthUtah/highlights.htm)
Curt Witcher with the Indiana Genealogical Society is one of two people
overseeing volunteers who are indexing all Indiana marriage records from
1820 to
1957 for the digitized images the LDS Church has. He heard about the
indexing
project at a national conference and asked his society to participate.
Volunteers range from beginners to experienced researchers, he said, because
the workload has been processed into manageable bits â meaning volunteers
can
spend only 30 minutes at any one time and feel a sense of accomplishment.
He said it's difficult to estimate how long it will take to index millions
of
records covering a 150 year span, but he's estimating it will be 36 months.
As enthusiasm builds, "it wouldn't surprise me if it took less than half
that
time," he said.
Errors are bound to occur, but should be caught because the system is
designed so every record is in entered twice â by two different people
working
independently of each other. If one record disagrees with the other, an
arbitrator
will decide which one is correct.
Amy Johnson Crowe with the Ohio Genealogical Society said the church
approached her group more than two years ago about volunteering, even before
the
project began. They've been working on an index for Ohio tax records already
digitized by the church since December. She dubbed the project
"mind-boggling,"
saying when people hear about it, "they usually want to get involved. It's
so
incredible from what we thought was possible only a couple of years ago. ...
There
is a lot of excitement about this."
As online access grows exponentially, information about early Latter-day
Saints â and details of their lives that may otherwise have been lost â
is
readily available, some of it online.
For example, the Mormon Pioneer Overland Travel database can be found at
lds.org under the "church history" tab, and provides names, dates and even
journal
entries about Latter-day Saints who came by wagon team or handcart to the
Salt Lake Valley, as well as a complete list of sources â some of them
full-text.
While the church's Family History Library is known worldwide, the
less-frequently-used Church History Library, now housed inside the east wing
on
the main
floor of the Church Office Building, offers information not available
elsewhere.
Holdings in the Church History Library have grown so large that a
250,000-square-foot building is now under construction west of the
Conference
Center to
house them all, along with administrative offices.
Brent Thompson, director of records preservation, said most of the site
excavation for the structure is complete, and concrete was poured earlier
this
week
for the initial part of the foundation. Workers have also tunneled under
North Temple to provide eventual access to the Church Office Building.
Construction is on target to be completed next year, but Thompson said it
likely
won't be
ready for public use until 2008.
Anderson said the combined initiative to expand public access to ancestral
information is "huge. Together they represent probably the most significant
changes in family history work ever undertaken."