General Indexing Guidelines
I am new to indexing and would like a printed copy of the General Indexing Guidelines. Can someone tell me where to find these in a print format?
Answers
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Really the best way to access the General indexing guidelines is to go to the project instructions and scroll down to the section that is titled General indexing guidelines. Then you can click on the bullet of the category where you have a question. That is going to be the most updated information that you will need for that particular project.
I realize that you want a printed format and I am looking for a current one for you. I will keep looking and provide a link in a future message. But because these guideline are changing periodically it is updated on line in that section of the project instructions. Since you are learning about indexing you could create your own by copying and pasting each section into a document and then printing it out. Just realize that the most current version will be in the project instructions and sometimes those guidelines change.
If I find a link to a printed copy of the General Indexing Guidelines I will respond to you in a bit with that.
Hopefully that will make sense.
Thank you for helping Index. That helps so many find records about their ancestors.
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Hi Darlene
I don't think that the current General Indexing Guidelines (GIG) exist as a single printable document anymore. FamilySearch seems to be moving toward using hyperlinked topic names. When you click on one it takes you to a "fresh" set of instructions, i.e a presumably up-to-date Knowledge Article on that topic.
The GIG always appears as the third section of all Project Instructions and looks like the following when you click on that section heading (General Indexing Guidelines) and expand it. It would be possible to create a document that has these links embedded in it. I'm not sure I'd want to print the whole thing out. I think the idea is that it's right there for you to access when you need it, while indexing.
I do think that it would be handy to have the GIG accessible as a whole with all of its subsections from the Help Center, without having to open a batch to access it. I'll make a suggestion to that effect in the Ideas section.
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Hi Darlene, If you want to the print the instruction, pull the instructions you want to print up and right click on it, one of the choice will be print. Click on print and it will print it for you. I would use the "Project Instructions" that will be the most current information.
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Good point, Tom. You could print each of the 17 General Indexing Guidelines (GIG) separately - click and print, click and print. But any of those sections from the GIG could become outdated since you last printed it.
I think there is value in being able to access the GIG outside of a particular project. And, I would prefer a conventional document with a Table of Contents hyperlinked to the fully expanded sections within. But such a document could become outdated because it is essentially a digital version of a printout - a snapshot in time. I guess that's why they've transitioned from the former practice of including the entire GIG text in the Project Instructions. The old GIG seemed to vary a bit from Project to Project, and this hyperlink setup is a way to address that variability.
So, a General Indexing Guidelines document comprising a preface and the above subsection hyperlinks (an aggregator of sorts) would be more stable. Once it existed in the Help Center, you could access it whenever needed, independent of any particular project.
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