Wednesday, October 19, 2011

For those Genealogists who just Cannot Wait

If you've ever transcribed a document, you know it's a slow process, and the larger the resource, the longer it takes. The Genealogy Today collection contains thousands of books and documents, many of which haven't even "met" the scanner yet. And as time passes, these items could be helping genealogists, if they were available. So, starting this week, we're providing access to resources that are not completely transcribed, and some that haven't even been started.

Sounds crazy, huh? It seems to make sense; publish the fact that these resources are in the collection and give genealogists a way to request information from them. You will still need to have an active subscription to our database service, and when we fulfill a lookup request, the resulting information will be added to the database, so it will be available for all subscribers.

Here are some of the initial "partial" items released:
And here's the first one that hasn't even been started:
On each of these pages, there will be a link "request an individual LOOKUP from this resource" that allows subscribers to prod the transcriber into skipping ahead and capturing any relevant names that match their research interests.

You will also now be able to make lookup requests in the larger books that are being indexed.

Over the next few weeks, dozens of additional resources will be made available in the subscription data section of the Genealogy Today web site. Depending on the volume of lookups, expect to get a response within two to three business days.