Calling all Citizen Archivists! The 1940 census has been online for two weeks now. We have heard many great stories about people you have found in the census. We also know there are some of you who don’t know where people were living in 1940 and therefore cannot search the census without an name index.
The good news is that efforts have begun to create a name index and YOU can help! Join the 1940 Census Community Indexing Project at www.the1940census.com to help create a name index so the census may be searched by name. To get started you will need to download and install the indexing software, register as an indexing volunteer, and download a batch of images to transcribe.
This project is a collaborative effort of volunteers, supported by the National Archives, Family Search, Archives.com, Findmypast.com, the National Genealogical Society, the Federation of Genealogical Societies, the Association of Professional Genealogists, and many other archives and societies. When the index is completed, the National Archives will make the named index available for free.
Get started today and join the 253,514 people who have already signed up to create the index!
The National Science Foundation-funded XSEDE (Extreme Science and Engineering Discovery Environment) program has given a research allocation to NARA’s Applied Research Partners at the National Center for Supercomputing Applications for their work using supercomputers to create searchable access to all of the information in the digital images of the hand-written 1940 Census forms.
You can read more about the NCSA work here:
http://isda.ncsa.illinois.edu/drupal/project/census
Here’s an online article by The Society of Photographic Instrumentation Engineers (SPIE) Toward free and searchable historical census images about the work of Dr. Kenton McHenry, et al. at NCSA,
Abstract: Combining automation and crowd sourcing will provide access to archived handwritten forms.
http://spie.org/x57241.xml?highlight=x2410&ArticleID=x57241
I like indexing and have spent many hours doing just that in the interest of genealogy. I am retired but advanced in years, hard of hearing but have fair to good eyesight.
I try to always self proof any genealogy text and find doing something useful to be pleasant use of time.