Free training · Using FamilySearch · Beginner · 15 min
Give Something Back
The last part of the FamilySearch track: volunteer indexing, which is also the fastest handwriting training there is, and the habits that make your research outlive you.
Free FamilySearch training from Stuck in the Branches on contributing: how volunteer indexing works, why it trains your eye for old handwriting, how indexes go wrong, sourcing every fact you add, writing reasons future researchers can follow, uploading your own photographs, and clearing duplicates.
What you will learn
- Complete a volunteer indexing batch from home.
- Use indexing deliberately as handwriting training.
- Predict how an index mangled a surname, and search accordingly.
- Attach a source and a readable reason to every fact you enter.
- Leave the shared tree better by uploading, merging and replying.
The full written guide
Chapter 1. Welcome
Everything you searched was typed by a volunteer.
Give Something Back.
Welcome back, and well done, because this is the last guide in the FamilySearch track. Everything you have done so far used other people's work. This one is about putting some back, which also happens to be the fastest way to get good.
All of This Was Done by Volunteers.
The indexes you have been searching did not appear by themselves. Volunteers read the handwriting and typed the names, millions of them, for nothing. Every time a search works, somebody you will never meet sat down and did that for you.
Chapter 2. Indexing
How it works, and that you cannot break it.
Indexing Is How You Repay It.
FamilySearch runs a free indexing programme. You are shown an image of a record, you type what it says into the fields provided, and you submit it. That is the whole job. It can be done in ten minute pieces from a sofa.
They Teach You, and They Check It.
The projects come with instructions, you choose the difficulty, and there is a review stage, so a beginner cannot damage anything. Start with a printed project in your own language before you go anywhere near eighteenth century handwriting.
Chapter 3. Why it makes you better
Handwriting, and how indexes go wrong.
It Will Make You a Better Researcher.
This is the selfish reason, and it is the real one. Indexing trains your eye on old handwriting, abbreviations and the shapes of real documents, faster than any other activity. Several hours of indexing and you will read your own ancestors' records differently.
You See How Indexes Go Wrong.
Index a few hundred names and you learn exactly how a surname becomes something unrecognisable: the clerk's loops, the faded ink, the ditto marks, the column somebody read as the wrong field. After that you will search with far more imagination.
Chapter 4. What you leave behind
Sources, reasons, photographs, duplicates.
Source What You Add to the Tree.
Back in the tree, the single most generous thing you can do is attach the source for every fact you enter. An unsourced date gets copied, doubted and eventually deleted. A sourced one survives, and the next descendant can see how you knew.
Write Reasons People Can Follow.
Use the reason box in full sentences, naming the record you relied on. You are writing to a cousin in forty years who cannot ask you anything. That sentence is the difference between your research outliving you and it being undone by somebody with a family story.
Upload the Photographs You Have.
Whatever is in your closet is not in anybody else's. Memories uploads are the contribution only you can make, and they are permanent. Nobody else on earth can add that photograph of your great grandmother, because nobody else has it.
Clear the Duplicates You Trip Over.
When you find your ancestor sitting in the tree three times, merge them carefully instead of working around it. It is dull housekeeping and it is the thing that unblocks every researcher who touches that family after you.
Chapter 5. Answer the messages
The shared tree assumes people reply.
Answer the Messages.
When somebody contacts you about a shared ancestor, reply, even briefly. These are your cousins, they have records you do not, and the whole shared tree works on the assumption that people answer. Being one of the people who answers pays you back quickly.
Chapter 6. The track is finished
What you can do now, and where to go next.
That Is the Track Finished.
You can now build a tree, read a person page, work the sources, use memories, handle the shared tree, search properly, browse what is not indexed, use the catalog and the wiki, reach restricted records, and contribute. That is a genuinely competent researcher.
There Is More, When You Want It.
The other track goes further: interviewing relatives, record keeping, reading difficult documents, breaking a real brick wall, and what DNA can and cannot tell you. And when a line matters too much to leave stuck, we do this professionally and you can hand it to us.
Chapter 7. Wrap up
One batch, one source.
Index for ten minutes, source one fact.
Try one indexing batch this week, and go back and source one fact you entered without one. Then pick your next guide. We are here when you get stuck, and glad you came this far.