The whole world has slowed way down.

 

[Except for health care workers, bless them!]

 

But, most of us are at home.  We are working from home, homeschooling, and just being home.  I’ve had lots of people reaching out to me asking what family history activities they can help their children participate in during this downtime.

What a great question!!

There are several answers, but today, let’s talk about indexing.

What is indexing?

Indexing is the process of making records searchable.  Indexers look at record images, read information from the record and type that information into the indexing program.  That record then becomes searchable.  Indexing feeds all of our family history discoveries.

Right now, FamilySearch is flooding the indexing portion of their website with batches.  That means we can all help out!  There are plenty of projects.

This video is an overview of where to go to learn about indexing, and a few resources you can use to teach your children and youth about indexing.

 

 

 

These videos are great starting places to learn what indexing is and why it matters:

 

 

 

 

 

What do you need in order to index?

 

A free FamilySearch account and a computer or iPad.

 

Access FamilySearch indexing here.

(iPad minis are hard to use for regular indexing, but phones and iPad minis work GREAT for record linking — learn more about that here, https://rll.byu.edu/)

 

Don’t be afraid of making mistakes!  Just do your best.  You will learn so much about record types, reading old handwriting, and so much more.  Indexing helps make family history so much better for everyone!

As a beginning indexer, it is a great idea to read all of the project instructions and then index several batches from the same project.  Once you feel comfortable and want to try something else, switch to a different project.

 

Moms — bless you!  I know you are trying to keep your children and youth busy.  I’m right there with you!  Maybe have an index-a-thon as a family or extended family.  Make it fun.  Have rewards or prizes of some kind.  If your children love competition, make it a competition.  If they need something calmer, set a family goal and track everyone’s batches so it’s a big celebration of every single person’s participation.  If you have teenagers and elementary school children, pair them up and have them index a batch together.  Let your older ones help the younger ones have simple successes.  We can all work together.

Tomorrow I will share a basic lesson regarding preserving memories using FamilySearch and the FamilySearch app.

 

 

Now, let’s all index!!