Indexing Collaboration between Ancestry.com and the Federation of Genealogical Societies

Ancestry.com formally launched the World Archives Project at the kickoff of the Federation of Genealogical Societies annual conference this morning. If you haven't yet heard of it, the World Archives Project is a global volunteer indexing initiative designed to enlist genealogists and family history enthusiasts to help create indexes from images of original historical records. For those of you familiar with FamilySearch Indexing, this is a similar type of indexing project. And before you get bent out of shape about a commercial organization enlisting volunteer labor, the indexes will be and remain free to the public on Ancestry.com. Active contributors (currently this means participants who help index 900+ records per quarter) will also receive free access to the original images, and those who already subscribe to Ancestry.com will be eligible for a discount on their subscription renewal - 10% off the annual U.S. Deluxe membership and 15% off an annual World Deluxe membership. It's unclear if you have to index 900+ records in each quarter preceding your renewal, or if you only have to index 900+ records sometime in the year prior to your renewal. Active contributors will also be able to vote on which records the project indexes next.

Along with the official launch of the World Archives Project, which has been in private beta for several months indexing Wisconsin Mortality Schedules and Nebraska State Censuses, the Federation of Genealogical Societies (FGS) announced that they are the first organization to partner with Ancestry.com during this beta phase, offering a way for the members of the 500+ genealogical societies that they represent to become involved in digitizing and preserving important historical records from their local communities. Current available projects for volunteer indexing include Southern California naturalization indexes and the Alabama state census.

If you have any questions about the World Archives Project and the collaboration between Ancestry.com and FGS, I'll be meeting with Tim Sullivan, CEO of Ancestry.com early this afternoon. Please feel free to post your question in the comments below and I'll do my best to get an answer for you!