World Archives Project

I have two favorite phrases when it comes to the Ancestry World Archives Project.  They are – PUBLISHED FOR KEYING and RELEASED TO SEARCH .  Today we have two of the former and five of the latter.  Wow!

Since there’s so much going on I won’t add commentary on each of the collections.  But, I will add some general suggestions that will likely help you.

First up PUBLISHED FOR KEYING:

Anytime we publish new projects for keying, we create a project page on the wiki.  Each project page starts with all of the basic instructions for that project.  In addition, some of our more active community members download image sets from new projects right away and then update the wiki with specific examples to further clarify those instructions.  (So, be sure to check back regularly in the first week or two after we publish or click “watch” on the top right of each page so you receive a notification if and when the page is updated.)

Lastly, on each project page there is a discussion tab.  I would encourage each of you, as you have questions about how to key on a given project, to read the project page first and then go to that discussion tab to ask your question (or see if others have already asked the same question and had it answered).  Many of you have expressed great frustration about having to sort through message board postings to find the answers you are looking for.  These projects pages allow us to keep all questions and answers and the most up-to-date instructions in one single location.  Click through on the links below to access the project page for these two new projects – or you can access them directly from the keying tool by clicking on Help | View More About This Project.

This week’s projects – New York, Erie County Census 1855, 1865, 1875 and Poland, Jewish Holocaust Survivors Registered in Warsaw, 1945-1946

Next up our RELEASED TO SEARCH projects:

I do very few global searches on Ancestry.com – just plugging information into the search box on the home page or the main search page.  Usually, I figure out what I’m looking for – do I want a census record for a certain family, am I looking for a marriage record for a specific time and place, etc.  Then, I go to the Card Catalog (it’s the bottom option on the Search menu) and I determine if the records I am looking for even exist on the website.  Once I find a database I am interested in searching and click on it, I still refrain from filling in the search boxes until I have done one more thing.  I scroll to the bottom of the page and read the database description.

These database descriptions tell me exactly what I can expect to find in the database (so I don’t waste my time searching for something that doesn’t exist), where the original data came from (so I can go back to the content provider for originals or more information), and what was indexed so I know what to search (for example, I’m not going to put in a death date when I’m searching for a marriage record because the death date doesn’t exist on that kind of a record).

Click the links to our newly released databases to see what I’m talking about.

1901 New South Wales, Australia Census
(259,940 records completed by 1,266 keyers)

1891 New South Wales, Australia Census
(190,892 records completed by 2,446 keyers)

Ohio and Florida, City Directories, 1902-1960
(3 AWAP projects were rolled into 1 database – Jacksonville, Florida City Directories; Lorain County, Ohio City Directories; and Ohio State Directories)
(4,912,472 records completed by 2,946 keyers)

So, there you have it – our published to key and released to live projects over the last week.  Thank you all for your continued contribution and…

Until next time – Happy Keying!

P.S. – For those of you in the Pacific Northwest of the United States – I am visiting your neck of the woods over the next few days.  I am presenting an all day Ancestry.com seminar on Sunday at the Mittleman Jewish Community Center in Portland, Oregon.  Registration starts at 8:30 am and the program runs until 4:00 pm.  On Monday evening I will be in Seattle teaching a two-hour class on Ancestry.com.  The program will be held at the Stroum Jewish Community Center on Mercer Island and registration begins at 6:30 pm.  If you can make, I would love to meet you.  Be sure to take the time to introduce yourself and let me know you are an AWAP contributor.