I was just checking out the Ancestry World Archives Project and thought this would be a good time to post an update on the status. There are currently more than 7,900 participants in the project and close to 4 million records have been keyed! The top indexer alone has indexed more than 70,000 records.  We should begin seeing collections posted to Ancestry.com in the near future.

Here are some of the collections that are being indexed right now:

• Nebraska State Census, 1885
• New England Naturalization Indexes
• New York Naturalization Indexes
• New York City Naturalization Indexes
• Southern California Naturalization Indexes
• England and Wales, Criminal Registers, 1805-1892
• England Newspaper Index Cards (Andrews Collection)
• Cartes postales historiques (France-Historic Postcards)

Click here if you’d like to learn more about the World Archives Project or if you’d like to join the community of keyers.   

You can also view the free webinar that was held on the World Archives Project in the Learning Center webinar archive. There is also a new article on Reading Old Handwriting in the Help section of Ancestry.com, that is useful both in keying for the World Archive Project and in reading the handwriting we’re faced with in our research.