FamilySearch Indexing Event: “5 Million Record” Day on July 2

Geoff Rasmussen

29 Jun 2012

You all know that I'm a big fan of FamilySearch Indexing. Because of their efforts we have billions of free records and images at FamilySearch. They have announced an exciting event for July 2 that you can participate in. They will be trying to break their all-time record for records indexed in one day. The previous record of 4.9 million records was set on April 30.

I hope you will join me sometime on the 2nd to index at least one batch. The cool thing is – you get to choose the records to index. If you haven't yet signed up as an indexing volunteer, visit http://indexing.familysearch.org. We also have a couple of webinars you can watch about indexing here and here.

Here's their official announcement:

July 2, 2012 (or 1st, depending on your time zone), is going to be an amazing day! We can feel it! It could be the first day that we achieve "5 Million Name" fame. That's right. It might be the day that we index and arbitrate 5 million names (or records) in just 24 hours! No other name transcription project that we know of has ever come close.

Together, we've achieved unbelievable success in the past three months. Our highest day for indexing & arbitrating combined—for the last three months and in the history of indexing—was April 30th. On that day, we reached 4.9 million records submitted. Amazing! We nearly made 5 million with just our everyday effort!

To make sure we reach the goal of 5 million records, we'll need help from every indexer and arbitrator out there. Everyone will need to submit an extra batch or two (or more!) during the day. Remember, though, that our "day" starts at 00:00 Coordinated Universal Time (UTC/GMT), which means 6pm MDT (Utah time), on Sunday, July 1st. Check the Facebook event page for your local start time.

Now, please don't think that we're focusing completely on quantity and forgetting about quality. Next week, to prepare, we'll provide ways to improve the quality of your work and suggestions for how to get ready for the big day.

Spread the word! Tell your friends and family about the opportunity to be a part of this history-making event. We may not have another chance like this for years, so plan now to get involved. We need you and everyone else out there to reach this goal!

Look for more details next week. For now, let's keep on indexing (and arbitrating)!

Start times for various locations: