Ancestry World Archives Project News

June is a great month!  We are starting the month with three new projects which will be followed by 4 projects going LIVE throughout the month. Our new projects are, West Yorkshire, England, Prison Records,1801-1914, Georgia, Control Register of Convicts, 1817-1976 and Pennsylvania, Genealogical Scrapbooks and County Ledgers.     West Yorkshire, England, Prison Records,1801-1914 is a collection of prison [...]

  Early this morning we achieved a huge milestone!  The record count started with invited beta testing in June 2008 and we reached 100,000,000 records keyed early this morning.  What an amazing accomplishment by an equally amazing community of contributors.  Thank you for your contributions, dedication to quality, and continued support of the World Archives [...]

To celebrate our four year anniversary we will be having a four week challenge.  Each week we will announce the “Project of the Day” challenges – some will be for keying and some for reviewing.  In addition to the daily challenges there will be prizes for the overall top keyer and reviewer each week and [...]

This past fall the United States Holocaust Memorial Museum and Ancestry launched a program for students in the U.S. to participate in keying records as part of their experience in learning about the Holocaust. The USHMM education staff have reached out to schools and we currently have 3 schools participating in the program. Having two [...]

We receive emails and see message board posts with this question on a regular basis. This is a tough one to answer for this main reason – if you have chosen to participate you have the ultimate say regarding what projects you will contribute to. Are there projects that we will hope to draw your [...]

Our oldest projects, Pavia, Lombardia, Italia: Registri di Morte, 1866-1937 and Pavia, Lombardia, Italia: Registri di Matrimonio, 1866-1937, have been around for almost 4 years and are some of our slowest moving projects, with projected completion dates of 2643 and 2713.  For these reasons, length of time they have been available (they were set up in a [...]

Today we released Rhode Island, Vital Extracts, Church Records, 1636-1850 and New York, New York, Quarterly Abstracts of Seamen’s Protection Certificates, 1815-1869. The Rhode Island, Vital Extracts, Church Records, 1636-1850 are a collection of vital records, for Rhode Island, taken from records kept by the churches.  They include birth, marriage, death, and other records.  We are [...]

As I sit on the hotel room floor, trying not to disturb those of my family who are still sleeping, I am especially grateful for technology advances that allow me to have flexibility of where I am working.  This reminds me of my first indexing experience.  I had a 20+ hour project that I had to [...]

Yesterday brought the end of the alphabet.  We completed 418 image sets for the U.S., 1928 Baker Roll and Records. Keyer: Kim B, Virginia Reviewer: Ann S, Pennsylvania The last challenge is a four day pick-your-project marathon!  With it being a holiday weekend, November 22-November 25, in the U.S. this may give the advantage to those [...]

This week we are releasing another oldie but a goodie – USHMM – Krakow, Poland, Applications for ID Cards for Jews during World War II (Part 3).  Although the project may seem a little more difficult – since it is mainly in German – I have found that the questionnaires aren’t as difficult since they are [...]