My New Mini-Hobby

 

One night a week Matt goes to youth night and enjoys his new assignment as deacon's quorum adviser. After the girls go to bed and before Matt comes home sometimes I have a little time on my hands. So I do a little indexing.

If you've never heard of indexing, that's a name for taking information off public records, like marriage certificates and census records, and record it in a computer program so that the information can be more easily read and researched. This makes family history research much easier. And indexing itself isn't that difficult either. I can index a record with 40 names on it in about 30 minutes.

Indexing has been around for more than a decade, but what got me started was the release of the 1940 US Census and the incredible interest in family history work around my new neighborhood. My neighbors all told me how easy it is. They also told me a few other things:

The US government has an agreement with The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter Day Saints to index the whole 1940 census in less than a year. What a challenge considering all indexers for the Mormon Church are volunteers.

If the deadline isn't met, the indexing work will be sent to private companies to do. This will not only cost the government (I mean the tax payers) extra money, but it may also mean that the records will not be free to be public when the work is done. Now, isn't family history so much more fun when you can find what you're searching for for free.

And the last thing. You don't have to be part of the Mormon Church to index records. You just have to go to this link and sign up. And like I said, even an hour a week can make such a difference.