Indexing the 1950 US Census
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There is no where I am aware of to sign up to index any particle batch. You will just have to watch and when in shows up in the list of batches to index. You can do download as many as 10 batches and you will have 5 days to get them all completed. If you do not get them completed in that time frame, the system will automatical pull them back. (the due date shows in "My batches") If that happens, you just have to download another batch to index. I hope this has answered your question.
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@Virginia Boone If you'd like to continue practicing indexing in the meantime Request a Batch today! It can help you get ready to index the 1950 US Census when it becomes an available Project.
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Virginia - According to the US Census site, those records will be made public in April next year. In the meantime, FamilySearch has many interesting projects to index. If you are new to indexing, I recommend this indexing tutorial by Kathryn Grant of the BYU Family History Library:
https://fh.lib.byu.edu/2019/06/17/web-indexing-kathryn-grant-13-jun-2019-60-min/
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I can never find any projects that I want to index. Indexing used to be a major part of my life; now I forget that the possibility exists. Why aren't more projects available?
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Hi Judy. Be sure that you are using this Web Indexing page to look for Batches/ Projects, not the old “Find a Project” link that you see to the right highlighted “Web Indexing.”
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As to why there aren't more projects, it's probably because much of the "low hanging fruit" is now gone. The remaining projects tend to be more difficult and more obscure records. Easy to read, widely used records such as censuses and vital records in the US, Canada and UK are mostly indexed by now.
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Check out this article for more information about the 1950 US Census:
https://www.archives.gov/news/articles/1950-census-access
It is being indexed by Artificial Intelligence/Machine Learning (AI/ML) and Optical Character Recognition (OCR).
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From @Amy Archibald ’s significant and very informative post/ link, it seems that there may be some reviewing rather than many indexing opportunities available with the release of the 1950 census in April. Surely those in charge of these kinds of issues for Family Search are fully aware of this government effort to automatically index the census. And I expect that they know or have a pretty good idea what, if any role FS indexers and Reviewers may play in refining the census data for FamiltSearch’s use.
Do the Moderators have any comments, and/or would they please look into this?
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After I read @Amy Archibald's post, I pulled up the gov't article and it looks like Ancestry.com will have dibs on the 1950 Census -- my impression from reading is that those of us with "free LDS" accounts will not be able to view the original 1950's Census pages or much of anything else -- so I too would like Moderators to look into this
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https://www.familysearch.org/en/info/us-census/1950-census/
You can sign up to receive updates from FamilySearch regarding the 1950 US Census.
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The English projects are being indexed more than any other language. FamilySearch is/has encourage those with other than English language skills to chose a project they are comfortable with other than English. For example, just today (April 1, 2022), I saw 139 projects covering all languages compared to 44 of all levels of difficulty of English.
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I see today, April 1, 2022 on the Indexing page there is an ad stating "Learn more about the 1950 Census". This tab took me to another screen stating" "Many of the areas enumerated in the 1950 U.S. Federal Census can now be browsed for free on FamilySearch. " So that makes me wonder if and why are we going to be doing any indexing of this project as we have done with other census records?
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The government website (archives.gov) has the 1950 Census available to search and browse. The National Archives used artificial intelligence to index the names on the census. That name index is not being shared with other organizations, like FamilySearch.
FamilySearch and Ancestry are working together to make the 1950 Census searchable for free. Ancestry is using their proprietary artificial intelligence technology to index *every field* of the census (not just the names). They will share that index with FamilySearch. Volunteers can help improve the index and correct any errors made by the computer. As soon as every field of a state's index has been reviewed, then the state will become fully searchable on FamilySearch. These records can then be made available for hints on the Family Tree. The 1950 US Census records and images will always be free to search and view on FamilySearch.org.
You can learn more, about this here: https://www.familysearch.org/en/info/1950-census-details
I recommend watching the video, which explains the relationship between Ancestry and FamilySearch. There are also FAQs on that page.
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I can see how this would be confusing. The thing can be browsed today on FamilySearch are census images. You can browse by place and flip through the pages of the census by Enumeration District, but there is no searching by name until we have done the index review.
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