I have been indexing for quite a few years now. I have been very frustrated with current batches.
I can do some advanced batches, Dutch Reformed Church, Bureau of Land Management, etc. However, I cannot decifer records from Ireland and that seems to be all you have. I feel like if I were a beginning indexer, I would be very discouraged and not even try. I am beginning to feel a little like that as a ten-year indexer. My indexing total since I started is 284,000. I do enjoy indexing but feel like you have not been putting enough of a selection of records to index.
Why are there no intermediate batched to do?
Answers
-
A lot of it has to do with whom Family Search has contracts with. Once an agreement has been reached with the project owner(s) and FS reach an agreement, reviewing is done, Projects Instructions and Field Helps are written, then the project is available for indexing. This does take a while. We had to wait a week between the time Part B of the Michigan Naturalization project was pulled and it became available again. Billion Graves and the National Archives' Citizen Archivist could always use help.
0 -
It is also true that a lot of the "low hanging fruit" is now indexed, e.g. US Federal censuses were indexed many years ago. Computers are also being used to index typed records. So that means there's less easier records to index. With all the progress being made with reading handwriting by computer, I feel it will be relatively soon that humans won't index and will only need to review what a computer has indexed.
As suggested above, you can try other Indexing organizations. If you're proficient with Dutch records then you could try VeleHanden.
0 -
You may want to refresh or reset your choices for Find A Project - for example, Here's how mine is set up: I don't index beginner batches any more, but I like to see as many projects as are available in English since that's my only language.
0 -
I have mine set the same way but it makes no real difference; I get the same projects. I do try to do some of the Irish batches and when I cannot read them, I just return them. I am able to read a few and those I go ahead and either review or index, etc. It feels like they have been here forever and even when one group is finally done, they just add another. It wouldn't be so bad if they didn't include so many of the same type at one time, but it is what it is. I'm sure that anyone who is searching for Irish records appreciates whatever they can find. All I can suggest is that you just at least try, but if you realize you can't do it, return it, don't mark it as NED unless it is truly NED because maybe someone else can read the Latin ones or maybe they can decipher the words you can't read.
1