Gone are the days in which the only choice in doing yourgenealogical research was to head on over to the local library or genealogysociety. You’d pack up your notebooksand pens, spend hours looking at a few books and be pretty pleased if you foundanything new. Now, with just a few clicks, many of those documents, records andout of print books we desperately needed to get our hands on can be seen with afew clicks of the mouse.
Ahhhhhhhhhhh…I like this form of genealogical couch potato-ness,(although I also still love my library trips)! BUT, those records don’t just upload themselves to the internet all ontheir own. There is an army ofvolunteers, transcribing them for free all over the world, every, single day. They’re fighting valiantly to save out ofprint books and documents which could disappear forever. They’re the ones that let you sit on your duffin your living room and hand you that long needed source or an ancestor’s willthat makes your tree complete. I’m a part of this transcription army and amdarn proud of it.
Please won’t you join the transcription army? It’s so easy to do, right at home and you candictate who you transcribe for, what you want to transcribe and if you willspend 5 minutes or 50 hours a month doing it. It’s like being a freelance historian – preserving our past one page ata time.
Here are just a few transcribing opportunities to get youstarted. And, make sure to check withyour local genealogy or history society and public library to see if there isany way you can lend a hand with their transcription projects. If you have any suggestions for volunteering opportunities, please feel free to add them in the comments section. I'd love to see all of your ideas! Thanks!
- FamilySearch Worldwide Indexing With their iphone and ipad apps, you can index virtually everywhere!
- Project Gutenberg Lots of different types of volunteer opportunities here to keep out of print and rare books alive.
- Billiongraves.com Help document our cemeteries. There's also a smartphone app to make it super easy.
- Ancestry World Archives Project Lend a hand to the folks over at Ancestry.com.
- Genealogy Trails
- New England Historic Genealogical Society You don't have to live in Boston to help my favorite genealogical society.
No comments:
Post a Comment