World Archives Project

Here we are two weeks in to our World Record Challenge and there are some pretty fun things happening around here.

Anna and I spent this past weekend in Los Angeles at the Southern California Genealogy Jamboree.  This huge event (1700 attendees) gave us an opportunity to showcase the Ancestry World Archives Project with several large group demos as well as one-on-one instruction with dozens of people.  We heard from many of you about how much you enjoy participating and especially about how much you appreciate the opportunity to “give back” to the genealogy community in this way.

In addition to that, we held a special reception on Saturday evening as a thank you to our keyers in the area.  We had over 60 people in attendance.  It was fun to finally meet some of you in person.  There was good food, great conversation, and we took the opportunity to premier our new video.  (Watch this space for a link in the coming weeks.)  At that event we also had two keyers and one society partner each speak for a few minutes to the group about their keying experience and why they chose to get involved.  A big thank you to Dorinda, Richard and Sandy for their role in making that a special evening for all of us.

We closed out our 2nd week with over 1.4 million records keyed and arbitrated – well on our way to our goal of 8 million records for the summer.  I continue to be impressed with both the quantity and the quality of your contributions to this effort.

Lest you think I forgot – I also want to announce our 2nd weekly challenge winner:

Sophia from Oregon successfully completed image sets from 20 different projects.  Way to go!  Kate from England was a close runner-up with 19 projects keyed.  And, Karen from Oklahoma rounds out our top 3 with 14 projects.

We noticed that quite a few of you tried out brand new projects this week.  (That was, after all, the REAL objective to this week’s challenge.)  We hope you found something new that caught your attention (and maybe even your imagination).

Now here we are in week 3.  This week’s challenge is to see who can arbitrate the most number of records.  If you aren’t yet an arbitrator the qualifications are fairly simple – you must have keyed 2000 records in the past 90 days and those records must have been arbitrated with an accuracy rate of 92% or better.  If you meet those qualifications, check the lower right-hand side of your keying tool for your invitation to become an arbitrator.  Then, be sure to read our arbitration instructions here.

Thanks again to each of you for your contribution – we appreciate every record keyed and arbitrated no matter how much or how little your current time and circumstances allow.

Until next time – Happy Keying!