A New Carnival!

Although I'm late in posting this, I still wanted to mention that a new carnival, the Carnival of Genealogy Societies, has been created! You can read more about the carnival here. The topic for the first edition will be on

"Doin' Things Right! Shine a spotlight on a specific program, project, or publication at a genealogical society and tell us why it worked. Tell an anecdote about how you benefited from a particular genealogical society service. Share a success story and be specific! The deadline for submissions is March 7, 2010."

Enjoy!

88th Edition of the Carnival of Genealogy Posted!

The 88th edition of the Carnival of Genealogy has been posted! You can read it here. The topic for the next edition will be on

"Ode to My Family's History! This time around we'll be composing a poem that tells our family's history. It can be long or short, rhyme or not rhyme, funny or serious, illustrated or not... you choose, but make it appropriate as an introduction for a book or video on your family history. The challenge is on! The deadline for submissions is February 1st, 30 submissions accepted."

Enjoy!

Update to the Carnival of Genealogy and Topic for the 88th Edition

An update on changes for the Carnival of Genealogy and the topic for the next edition of the Carnival of Genealogy has been posted! You can read it here. The topic for the next edition will be on

"Volunteerism! Here's a chance to toot your horn about whatever genealogy projects, organizations, or events you voluntarily give your time and efforts to. What do you get out of volunteering? How did you decide what to volunteer for? How much time each month do you spend volunteering for genealogy projects/organizations/events? Is there an organization or project you'd like to recommend to others? Tell us all about it! The deadline for submissions is January 15, 2010."

Enjoy!

Still Looking ...

I just want to let everyone know that I am still looking for hosts for the Carnival of Central and Eastern European Genealogy. I believe I have someone for November, but I am still looking for someone to volunteer as a host for the months of September and October. If you are interested, please e-mail me at: jess_history at yahoo dot com. Thanks!

My Brief Try-out of Ancestry's World Archives Program ...

Yesterday, I received an e-mail that I could participate in Ancestry's World Archives Indexing program. I originally signed up to be notified because I was curious, and I decided to download the program. After I downloaded the picture, I decided to index an image set.

After downloading the image set, I had to go through three steps to before I could even begin indexing the image. (And I had to do that for every image in the set.) One of the steps was in choosing the layout of the image, and another step was to set the boundaries for the highlighting. Only after those steps was I able to begin indexing.

Personally, I think FamilySearch's indexing program is easier to use and more user-friendly. When it comes to indexing the images, I only have to download it, and I can than start indexing the image. With Ancestry's program, I have to go through other steps before I can even get to the indexing. To be honest, I do not want spend the extra time setting up the image when I can just instantly download an image from another indexing program and start indexing. So, I just decided that using Ancestry's program was not worth my time and uninstalled the program. To be fair, though, Ancestry's program is much different from FamilySearch's program. I just happen to prefer FamilySearch's program over Ancestry's when it comes to indexing images.

Genealogy and History Thoughts Column 16 - My Thoughts on the Ancestry-FamilySearch Partnership

Earlier today, I mentioned my shock at the Ancestry-FamilySearch partnership announcement, and as I promised, I'm posting my thoughts on this announcement.

Not only do I feel shocked, I'm also angry. As a person who has volunteered to index records through FamilySearch, I feel as though I have been cheated and misled. When I decided to help out, the information on the FamilySearch indexing website led me to believe to that the images indexed would be offered online for free. Now, FamilySearch is apparently willing to give transcribed indexes that volunteers like me, had worked on for free to Ancestry.com, a subscription based site. I had not expected this to occur, and I'm upset since I put a lot of time into indexing images since I became a volunteer. Since I began volunteering in April of 2007, I have over 24,000 names/record columns. I realize that may not be a lot to other people, but one has to keep in mind that I am also a full-time college student.

Of course, I mostly feel betrayed because I had hoped that FamilySearch's posting of images online would be a competitor to Ancestry.com. I realize there are other subscription-based genealogy websites out on the internet, but Ancestry appears to pretty much have an almost monopoly of the genealogy market. I was just hoping that competition would lower some of the pricing of subscription prices for fee-based genealogy sites since there are some people who cannot afford to pay for a subscription to Ancestry. I'm a college student, so I truly cannot afford a subscription, and I'm trying to keep the price of my genealogy research fairly low, as much as I can at the moment. Now, I guess gotten my hopes up too much.

As to whether I will continue indexing images, I'm not sure. I like indexing records, and I'm not sure if I just want to quit completely. I think I need to think this over before I make a hasty decision, or for the moment, I could just index other records instead of the 1920 census. I might just do that. So, what do you think? As always, you can leave a comment with your thoughts. All comments are welcome.

Whoa! This Is A Bit Shocking ...

Did I read that right? I just happened to notice an article on Ancestry's blog about the agreement between Ancestry and Familysearch. You can read the announcement here. I did not expect this to happen, and at the moment I'm stunned. I will, though, post my thoughts later today in another post as this one announcement I cannot pass up.

On another note, this is my 619th post in less than a year-and-a-half. Since I started posting in Mid-March 2007, I have posted that many posts!

Records Being Indexed At FamilySearch - An Update

In case anyone is wondering which records are currently being indexed at FamilySearch Indexing, here is a list of a few records:

• 1870 U. S. Census
• 1930 Mexico Census
• State censuses of South Dakota and Wisconsin
• Irish bmds
• Philadelphia marriage indexes

As you can see, several records are being indexed. A few of these records have been indexed for a while. You can find out more information here.

FamilySearch Indexing

For the past several weeks I have been a volunteer with the FamilySearch Indexing program. So far, I have primarily helped with indexing the 1900 Census. Some of the handwriting has been hard to read, but most of the handwriting on the censuses images that I have transcribed and indexed were not difficult to read.

I am not a member of the LDS church. I just found about the project while searching on the internet, and I decided to volunteer.

You can find out more about FamilySearch Indexing here: http://www.familysearchindexing.org/en/index.jsp

Please note, that you will have to download FamilySearch Indexing's program in order to help index the images of that are being indexed.