Hitting a Brick Wall?
Genealogists Hate This One Simple Trick
I am going to tell you exactly how to solve a brick wall, although maybe not your own. Indexing solves brick walls. To overcome such an obstacle, indexing plays a unique and important role in genealogy work. The easiest way to find a document is a simple computer search. Finding ancestors is a matter of finding documents. With indexing, the quest becomes easier and faster. Despite many improvements, computers continue to struggle to read old documents correctly. With indexing, people convert images of old, historical records into readable and searchable text.
Genealogy is a team sport whether we realize we have teammates or not. Our teams are comprised of deceased ancestors, living family members, research peers, and other people we will never meet. Each teammate has strengths and limitations. When it comes to brick walls, our most valuable teammates are the people we will never meet. These people are the document preservationists, digitizers, and indexers. When the obscure records are finally found, it is because someone indexed it. This is why indexing is a foundational exercise for genealogy. We all need this teamwork to drive forward our own genealogy research.
When we consider genealogy to be a shared goal, the old adage, “many hands make light work,” is never truer. Indexing is a great enabler of genealogy because, at some point, every genealogist will need more sources. Many of us may be past the point of using family sources to fill out our family trees, or maybe we never had many original documents. Once we have exhausted all of the documents and histories readily available to us, we must return to indexing. As genealogists, we need to support each other to pursue our own research. Genealogy without indexing leads to dead-ends and brick walls.
Indexing in the early 1990’s entailed packets of paper exchanged through the mail. Even eleven years ago, it meant records on CD-ROMs mailed to you with your answers returned on 3.5” floppy discs. After such a history, indexing certainly earned its reputation for tedium. Fortunately, the processes and methodologies have been reimagined and indexing has never been easier.
To get involved with indexing, FamilySearch.org and Ancestry.com offer similar opportunities, albeit with different experiences.
FamilySearch.org’s Web Indexing is the most streamlined system with ample support resources for indexers of all experience levels.
Ancestry.com’s World Archives Project requires a free program downloaded to your computer; some support is available, but it is difficult to navigate.
Both genealogy websites are worthy and have accessible indexing options for every skill level and busy schedule. Even when the work seems easy, it is still immensely valuable and important.
Many people unfairly disregard indexing as a tool for better genealogy work. Indexing is a meaningful solution to research problems. Someone, somewhere, put in the effort to make your online document research possible. Indexing is vital for computers to produce a search result that provides a major piece of your puzzle. It is time to return the favor. The documents you index likely won’t solve your brick wall, but they will solve someone’s brick wall.