World Archives Project

I had almost 75 percent of an image keyed in when the software locked. All my work was not saved. Is there any recovery option?

David, I have to say that the use of email for tech support is dismaying. I have had a total failure in saving my work, yet I don’t have a clue if I should give up the whole project or what. Waiting 24 hours for some kind of dialog kind of defeats the purpose of tech support. Frequently, the response finally comes and the tech support person didn’t understand the question or problem and it’s time to wait another 24 hours. Even the comment from Leah Cross’ hasn’t received any feedback in 20 hours (yeah, I know. You said 24 hours.)

I really enjoy the idea of helping get this done but it seems you have PLENTY of people to do the work. Do you really need another set of eyes and another keyer?

I was given an invitation to download this software by the Rootsweb listmaster (I am one of the many Rootsweb mailing list volunteers).

I was surprised to see that the only option available for image set was the Nebraska Census. Not that I have anything against Nebraska or their census, but I would be more inclined to work on images for an area that I am actually interested in researching. Especially given that my time is extremely limited. I’d rather spend the limited time I have working on images for things that I am interested in researching.

Is there any option to tell the software what my geographical preference is, as well as what my record type preference is?

Or is the Nebraska Census the only thing available right now? If that’s the case, how long before other resources become available? Will I get an e-mail informing me that new image sets are available for download?

I think this is a big step in the right direction.
Coming from a company that also does beta testing, its never perfect at first, but I think it will be great when it is released.

Hi There

I just want to say that its great being a “keyer” but is everything going to be about the US? What about the rest of the world?

Hello everyone and thanks for pitching in. When I first saw the notice for saving stories on Ancesty.com I ignored it thinking stories. You might want to change that to something more comprehensive, ie census, birth, marriage records. Then I recieved an invite from Rootsweb. I have helped the Family History site with keying so I thought why not. I can just jump back in forth on documents I am interested in. The more records we key in the more that will be available for all of us to use. Thank you Ancestry.com for giving us this opportunity to give back.

a few of the comments are a little selfserving arn’t they. i just want to help.
if it is not for my family, i am glad to help with all the others.
how wonderful to be able to help in this massive undertaking of puting all that information on the web. It is a great feeling when you can say to your mother or father (hay did you know you dad had 4 brothers,or that uncel Harry was in the unoin army,Thank you for the chance to help Ruth Smith

Thanks so much for letting us be a part of this. I’ve gained so much from Ancestry and others who have uploaded to the Internet that I am honored to be able to ‘give back’ and help others be successful. Also, I’m a database geek…

I love doing this!!!! Thank you so much for letting me help others find their ancestors and preserving all the date electronically. It must be a daunting task to catalog all the records that are available. I’m glad to help.

I, too, experienced the freezing of my computer after I had gotten through a page of data and was resolving the red areas. You have not seemed to answer Leah Cross’s comment, about this, and I wondered if this was going to continue to happen. I will not begin this again (although I found it fun, frustrating and gave me a good feeling of being globally helpful) if I am never going to be able able to save any data.
I am not using an old computer. I am running on Windows XP Pro, with 2 GB RAM.

Andrews Collection Comment:

I just started keying the Andrews Collection. I really enjoy reading the obits, births, wills, deaths etc…BUT there is only one option given to input this data, ENTRY, which makes this collection confusing to input. There can be more than one category to input from an image such as a birth announcement and a death announcement. Other images consist of Probate, Relative search notification, and hand written notes. These should include other fields for which ENTRY doesn’t provide, cities, towns, etc. I feel a lot of important information is not added. Oh, and I have so far come across images from South Africa, Jamaica, and England which makes this collection very interesting.

Sincerely,
Caroline Hancock

Since there’s no spot to record a problem with the California naturalization index cards, I’ll post it here. The form for keying in name changes is without value as I see it. It’s not clear if the old name is to be put in surname or alias–also since the index card is gone, one doesn’t know what the person’s new name is. A header is requested but there is no number. Confusing and I did the best I could.

I agree with Rose Mary about the California Naturalization index cards. Keying in the name change cards is confusing. I’ve actually only come across one card that stated what the old and new names were. There is never a header number on these cards.

I enjoying keying though and hope all this helps someone.

I’ve been working on the Alabama census’ and have done a couple of images with only a few issues(most already mentioned by others here). All the ones i’ve done so far were the “form layout” type of either single page left or single page right. I began working on the 1850 image a couple of days ago and this is now “form layout” type dual pages and has two separate images for a total of 4 pages. To key in just the first page of 40 records has taken about 2 hours!!!!!!! Hit a key, go get a cup of coffee while waiting for system response, hit a key, read the paper while awaiting response …..I can only think that the size of the file is the issue since none of the other images has caused this problem. I don’t see any way to check the file size. My system has more than the mininum requirements and i’ve got no other applications running . Working this way is painful and i’m about to toss my keyboard out the window. Any suggestions for speeding this up? anyone else experience it?

I am more than willing to help but have no interest in or knowledge of US States. Anything from UK & I should be raring to go.

I am having trouble figuring out this archive project. I tried to make an image blank, but when I typed in CTRL and the capital B I still could not do it. I got the “object referenced not set to an instance of on object”. What does that mean? Someone let me know what is going on. I just downloaded last night and am doing naturalization papers.

I am brand new.

Some of the data entry gets annoying…it keeps wanting items entered under “New” right after I finish the top line…and there is NO need to enter anything else. It’s like the program gets buggy and won’t let me submit until I enter blanks across several new lines. I can only imagine the Person Checking will be rolling their eyes at my ‘inept work’ because of this issue.