Adventures in FamilySearch Indexing: Week 76

Last week I missed working on FamilySearch Indexing. I was already on Sunday to sit down and work on it when my daughter came over in tears. She was all upset by her finances and thinking she might have to come home to live. She works full time and I knew that she made enough money to live on her own. So I went over to her apartment with her and installed AceMoney Lite and helped her with her finances. AceMoney Lite is the freeware version of AceMoney a financial management program. I love it because it is lite weight but powerful. Easy to understand and has a lot of great features. It's like my RootsMagic of financial software.

Over the years I have showed my kids how I do our finances, making out a budget, balancing the checkbook. My wisdom has always gone unheeded. All of them just go by what the bank says they have in their account. Since my daughter had never balanced her checkbook we went back a month and used Feb 1st starting balance and entered all the transaction to bring her current. Thankgoodness she had saved the last weeks receipts so we knew what was outstanding. After everything was accounted for we assumed we now had a true bank balance.

Since the program lets you categorize your transactions and even split them we could look at the reports and see where all her money was going. Boy was she shocked at how much she had spent in different areas. She could now see that she had enough money to pay all her bills if she just watched her budget and changed some of her habits. It was a great mother-daughter experience; even if it wasn't your typical Sunday evening activity.

As I was preparing to work on my indexing again this week my daughter dropped by. I am happy to report that she is still using the program and what a difference it is making in the way she is doing things. Isn't it funny how sometimes we never learn by someone else's instructions or example until we want or need to learn the lesson for ourselves.

I suppose I could of worked on my indexing during the week but life just got too busy and I am still nursing my sore arm. Even though it's getting late tonight I wanted to at least index a batch. I have to get to bed early because I have to be to work an hour earlier. I'm starting a new position with the company tomorrow. I will be in customer support which is right up my alley.

As usual I look to make sure if there are any messages from headquarters, and there are. This is from the FamilySearch indexing application itself - in My Messages.

From: Headquarters
Subject: Indexing Tip
Date: 25 Feb 2009

Indexing Batches with Multiple Images

Many projects contain batches with more than one image to index. Several projects even have varying numbers of images in different batches. If you are unsure how many images your batch contains, once the batch has downloaded look in the bottom left corner of the indexing screen. It will say Image 1 of 1, Image 1 of 2, etc, indicating how many images you need to look at and index.

Many of these images will have several records per image, but the data entry area is set at one record per image. If this is the case, the column on the left side of the data entry area will look like this:

01-01
02-01
03-01
04-01

The number on the left, before the hyphen, refers to the image in the batch. The number on the right, after the hyphen, refers to the record on that image. While proceeding through the data entry lines, when the number to the left of the hyphen increases, the system will take you to a different image in the batch. The record numbers do not necessarily match the line numbers on the document from which you are indexing.

Even if the data entry area is set at one record per image, you are still responsible to index all records on each image. To learn more about how to do this, refer to the project-specific instructions. These are available under the Project Information tab on the indexing screen. Click the Indexing Project Homepage link, then click the Project-Specific Indexing Instructions link, and look for the Number of Records per image heading.

Our next message:

From: Headquarters
Subject: Semimonthly Message
Date: 27 Feb 2009

Many current projects have batches containing just one image, but many of these images have TWO PAGES each. The projects include:

• Arkansas Marriages III
• Massachusetts 1865 State Census
• New Brunswick 1871 Census
• Ontario 1861 Census
• Cheshire Land Tax
  

Check your image carefully for a second page either to the right or below the page that is first visible. There are three ways to do this:

• Click the Image Navigation tab to the right of the data entry area, near to the Field Helps tab. In the window that appears, click and drag the darker gray area with your mouse to move around to all areas of the image and look for all the records that need to be indexed.
• Zoom out to 25% or less to see the complete image on your screen.
• Scroll all the way to the right and all the way to the bottom of your screen.

Well, now it's time to pick a batch to work from. I like the Federal Census and yes! There are a couple in there. I picked the New Jersey 1920 US Federal Census. It turned out to be the first page for that town. I love it when I get the first page - it's usually in better handwriting. This was in great shape, ink was nice and bold and clear. It didn't take me to long to finish the batch. I would of done more if I didn't have to get to bed.

I indexed 50 names which now brings my grand total to date up to 11, 031 - WAHOO!!! I reached the 11,000 mark. I have to celebrate it's taken me a while to get there. Now I am off to bed so I can start getting up early in the morning.

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