We had a message from Headquarters this week.
From: HeadquartersI didn't realize I could click on the description field and have it sort the languages in order. That was way cool. The results, four English projects, one French, one German and one Italian, nine Spanish projects. I of course picked an English project and that would be again...Louisiana 1850-1954 Death Certificates. It's tried and true for me, what can I say. Well, that was until I found out they had no batches to download. Now what was I going to do?
Subject: Semimonthly Message
Date: 01 Jul 2008
Sort Projects by Language
When downloading a batch, click Download From...to select a specific project. The Project Selection window appears with the projects listed in alphabetical order by name. To sort the projects by language, click Description.
Field Helps
Each project has its own set of field helps. These can be found to the right of the data entry area of the indexing screen. They explain what information should be indexed in each field.
Please review each of the field helps carefully when switching between projects because many field helps have similar names, but the instructions may be very different. For example, some projects require you to index the Race or Color field as just the first letter (W, B, etc.). Other projects require you to index the information as it was written on the document (W, White, Wht, etc). The Illinois-Cook - Birth Certificates project even instructs you to include the nationality if it was written in the race field on the certificate.
When there are colored (usually blue) underlined words in the field helps and project instructions, they are actually links that lead to more information. Click the word(s) to see additional helps. For example, click the Example link at the bottom of most field helps to see an example image and how to index one of the records.
Indexing Tip
Every time you download a batch, zoom out to see the full image and find all of the records on the document. Sometimes an image contains a two-page document and the second page may not be visible when zoomed in at 37% or more. The Missouri - 1850 US Census project has several batches that contain two pages.
To zoom out and view the full image:
- On the toolbar, click the magnifying glass icon with the minus (-) sign.
- Continue to click the icon until you see the entire image.
I decided to work on the Mississippi 1850 US Federal Census - Mortality Schedule. Then that one too said no project available. OK, since doing all this playing around two of the English projects didn't even show up on the list anymore. I decided to pick the Virginia 1870 US Federal Census, again no work available. This was getting CRAZY!! How about the Wisconsin 1870 US Federal Census, NO WORK AVAILABLE.
What is a person suppose to do when they want to work on indexing and there are no projects in their language? I protest and won't learn a new language TONIGHT. Can you tell I'm a little frustrated. This is hurting my record here. Can you count that you indexed if you really didn't index but tried to?
I didn't think indexing on a Tuesday evening would be so hard!
See ya tomorrow, for tomorrow is always another genealogy day!
1 comment:
That's a bummer that there wasn't anything available in English to index. I've been spending most of my time lately arbitrating Washington State death records. The first indexers were part of another project and only the second batch of indexers were through FamilySearch, so it's been interesting.
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