World Archives Project

That is the question that often arises when we announce new projects or a new tool update for the Ancestry World Archives keying tool. I acknowledge the frustration our Mac users in our community experiences when Ancestry produces products that are not Macintosh compatible. While we do not have anything new to announce for our […]

We made some improvements to our highlights with the most recent release of the keying tool.  We made some changes on the “back end” that we hope will improve their accuracy in highlighting the desired fields.   We’d like to ask you to please pay special attention to the highlights over the next couple of […]

Another community keyed project has gone live at Ancestry.com!   In 1887, Alexander Graham Bell founded the Volta Bureau to serve as a “center of information for deaf and hard of hearing person.”  Between 1888 and 1895, a research project was undertaken by Dr. Edward Allen Fay to learn more about marriages of the deaf […]

A couple of weeks ago a keyer, Durry York, left this comment on my New York birthday blog post:   My interest in NY Nat originals goes beyond the immigrants. My great-grandfather, Bernard J York, was the clerk in the court of sessions of Kings County.  His brother, Thomas H York, was the deputy clerk […]

Every once in a while (at least once a day) we stop and think about what changes we could make to the project that would make keying it easier.  For the past few days we have been working on the directories projects.  Based on feedback, message board posts and individual emails we realized that there was a need […]

Moments ago we crossed a remarkable milestone.  Just over a year after launching, the Ancestry World Archives Project now has 25,000 registered contributors!   For those of you who have just joined us.  Welcome!  We are happy to have you as part of this active community.   You may not know that every record indexed […]

Yesterday we launched a few “new” projects…   The international postcards that are now available, Austria, Australia (not available for long), France, Italy, Mexico and Sweden are a lot of fun to key.  The images are great to look at and the keying is pretty simple.  We have keyed these collections previously so some of the […]

Two weeks ago I said I’d be posting every Monday.  And so far, that’s the only Monday I’ve posted.  Consistency is not easy!  First, there was Labor Day so I wasn’t here at work but out enjoying the last hours of summer here in the mountains.  This weekend I made a quick (very quick) trip […]

A new version of the tool is now ready for installation. This version doesn’t include new functionality but rather is geared toward fixing some of the persistent bugs we’ve been seeing. This new version should take care of several of the known bugs including the “System.MissingMethodException” error and a bug that caused lost data on […]

It is estimated that well over 1/3 of the population of the United States can trace their ancestry through New York at one time or another.  Me?  I have a 5th great-grandmother (Charlotte Bouton) who was born in Rensselaer County, New York in 1780.  On another line of my family, my 3rd great-grandfather (David Heaps) […]