Tuesday, July 15, 2008

Adventures in FamilySearch Indexing - Week 51

Last Tuesday I tried to do my FamilySearch Indexing and I wasn't successful at getting a batch in English. So, here I am again, it's Tuesday and I'm going to try to index tonight.

First thing I did was look for any messages from headquarters. We do have one and it is available in both English and Spanish.
From: Headquarters
Subject: Censo de Argentina de 1869
Date: 10 Jul 2008

We are happy to announce that the revision page with updated instructions for the Censo de Argentian de 1869 project is available in English and Spanish. Please review and follow these instructions carefully.

To access the revision page:
  1. Go to www.familysearchindexing.org.
  2. Click on the Help tab.
  3. Click on Ask a Question.
  4. Type Argentina 1869 in the text box.
  5. Click the Ask button.
We thank you for your great work!
Now on to the batches available for download. WAHOO!! there are NINE English projects. I am jumping for joy! Do you think they read my blog last week telling how I wanted to index and nothing was available in English? I don't know; but a big thanks to whoever got more English projects for us to work on.

The choices available:
  • Missouri - 1850 US Federal Census
  • Kentucky - 1870 US Federal Census
  • Michigan - 1870 US Federal Census
  • Mississippi - 1870 US Federal Census
  • New Jersey - 1870 US Federal Census
  • Pennsylvania -1870 US Federal Census
  • Texas - 1870 US Federal Census
  • Wisconsin - 1870 US Federal Census
  • Washington State Deaths - 1908-1957
This is a tough one. Do I work on a census or the death records? Oh, I know the answer there. I love death certificates so on to Washington State.... I'm back already, it went really fast. I did two batches, one for last week and one for this week. I was going to download one more batch to work on but there were no more available right now.

I did notice that the Louisiana 1850-1954 Death Certificates were now on the list of available projects. I decided to try to download a batch. Awesome, it worked. I was able to do one batch. With that I completed 3 batches tonight with 50 records in total. My grand total is 7,813 records indexed to date.

Next week coming up should be the big one year mark for me. I went back through my old blog articles and found that I indexed my first batch on Aug 1, 2007. That wouldn't be next week. It appears I sometimes indexed more than a week apart at times. I can see that I first indexed on a Wednesday and then turned around that following Monday and did some indexing. What can I say I messed up. I guess my weeks will be off when I actually do hit my one year mark.

Oh well, I guess I'm an over-achiever! LOL!!! It sure does mess up my counting system, and I tried so hard to keep track. WAAAAAAHHHH...[deep breath]...I will live. It just gives me more time to build up my numbers and plan my party for myself. This is a milestone for me. It's taken quite a bit of effort to index every week and write an article about it too. Don't think for a minute after a year I'm all done indexing. I will be at it for a long-time to come.

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

1 comment:

Sue Anne said...

Renee,

I don't know if you see the notes from FamilySearch headquarters that are marked "Too all arbitrators", but I found out another reason why there may not have been English batches available for you a couple of weeks ago. Apparently, if there are too many batches waiting to be arbitrated, they won't allow any more to be indexed.

I haven't actually indexed a record since the last call for arbitration a couple of weeks ago and have been focused on just arbitrating - primarily the Washington Death Records. It's really thrown off my indexing / arbitration ratio. When I hit 50,000 records I was right at 25,000 / 25,000 (on purpose). Now, because I've spent so much time arbitrating, I'm at 26,000 / 35,000.

Here's the note from headquarters:


TO ALL ARBITRATORS:
We still need your help! The number of batches being arbitrated is out of balance compared with the number of batches being indexed. Please spend as much time as possible doing arbitration, especially for the Washington State Deaths and Louisiana 1850-1954 Death Certificates projects.
If the gap between the number of batches indexed and the number of batches arbitrated grows too large, indexing batches will not be assigned (even though they are available) until the arbitration numbers come back into balance. If you notice that a project is on the Download From… list, but the system states that there are no batches available to index, please download and submit arbitration batches as soon as possible for the same project.
Arbitration is a vital step in ensuring a constant flow of data through the indexing pipeline. We sincerely appreciate your efforts.