Sunday, September 30, 2007

Adventures in FamilySearch Indexing - Week 10

I decided today that I would pick an Indexing project and make it mine own. I chose the 1900 U.S. Federal Census for Vermont. I grew up in New York right near the boarder of Vermont so I thought that would be nice. I have some collateral family members from the state of Vermont so it seemed logical. It was really cool to see New York listed on some individuals places of birth. I think now I have found my indexing home. Having found my place to index I was a little more motivated to work on it. Vermont started to become "my people".

I only indexed two batches but I could of done more. My daughter Marie decided to start indexing today. Actually she started several weeks ago and only did like four lines and then I finished the batch up. This time she was more determined to learn how to index. Since she was sitting at her computer on the other side of town we had to work together over the internet.

We were using Instant Messenger to communicate. She would send me a JPEG of her question and I would read it and tell her what I thought it said. It was time consuming but do-able. She had tons of questions but refused to call me on the "phone" because IM was good enough in her opinion.

I hate to say it but I really wanted to just do my indexing and not hers at the same time. I kind of wished she would give up and go away. I know, terrible, terrible but it's the truth. Sorta like when little kids want to help you do the dishes. Thank goodness I knew better than to discourage her. I could picture in my mind this old Breck hair commercial where this lady says she told someone about the shampoo and they told someone, and so on and so on until eventually the whole T.V. screen if full of multiple pictures of Breck users. I was then able to envision my daughter influencing all these other single adults her age to start working on FamilySearch indexing.

When my daughter did tell me she had to stop working on it to go to some single adult thing, she did say it was addicting. Now we just have to wait and see if she tells someone, and they tell someone and so on and so on. Gosh I hope you're passing the word along too!

Stats to date 100 indexed today, making a grand total of 724 indexed individuals. That is so close to 1,000 it feels so obtainable.

See ya tomorrow, for tomorrow is always another genealogy day!

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