Group works to include ancestry on 2010 US Census short form

The future of the US Census as a prime source of family history information is in the news again. Dedicated researchers, always conscious and grateful for the information contained in available census records and our access to them, have equal interest in seeing that benefit continue into the future. This week, a short piece in SitNews notes a coalition of U.S. ethnic groups wants the next decennial Census to quantify the ingredients in America's melting pot. The "Ancestry Working Group" - which represents those of Italian, Irish, German, Arab, Greek, Iranian and Caribbean descent, among others - is calling on the Census Bureau to include a question on ancestry in the 2010 short Census form. The group won an earlier battle with the bureau to keep the question on the 2000 long form. The agency maintains that the short form simply doesn't have room and that adding an ancestry query would bump more vital questions.