FamilySearch Indexing Event Surpassed Goal

In July of 2016, FamilySearch held a Worldwide Indexing Event. Thousands of volunteers participated in the three day indexing event. When all was said and done, FamilySearch discovered that they had surpassed their goal!

FamilySearch’s 2016 Worldwide Indexing Event was an opportunity for volunteers to learn how to do indexing. It is a skill that can be used to make records more accessible. Once a person learns how to index, they can participate in other indexing events, or can spend some time indexing records whenever they can.

FamilySearch describes indexing as: “the process of entering information from the world’s digitally scanned historical documents into a database, making it easily searchable online”. After a record has been indexed, it becomes possible for people around the world to search for, and locate, that information.

FamilySearch had a goal in mind for their 2016 Worldwide Indexing Event. They hoped to have at least 72,000 volunteers. All those volunteers would work on indexing as many records as possible in a 72 hour period.

When the event was over, FamilySearch discovered that they surpassed their goal of 72,000 participants from around the globe. The indexing event had a total of 116,475 individuals participate. Each one worked as much as they could to make the world’s historical records available to people who are doing family history research.

These individuals indexed a total of 10,447,887 records. That final number of participants exceeded the original target by 44,475 participants. That works out to a 61.8% increase over FamilySearch’s planned goal.

FamilySearch was able to break down the number of volunteers who participated in their Worldwide Indexing Event based on the region of the world individuals were located in. There were 1,876 participants in Africa and the Pacific. There were 1,360 participants in Asia. Europe and the Middle East together had 3,948 participants.

Latin America had 16,686 participants. North America had the largest number of participants, with a total of 92,943. Participants in each region were able to choose record batches to index that were in their own language.

One might assume that the majority of the people who volunteered to index were older people. While it is true that many genealogists are older people, plenty of younger people also participated. There were a total of 10,348 people participating who were 17 years of age and younger. In the 18-30 range, there were 12,211 people. The 31-45 range had 19,460 people.

The age group that had the largest amount of participants was the 46-65 year olds. In addition, the 66 and older age group had 24,104 participate.

Related Articles at FamilyTree.com:

* FamilySearch is Having a Worldwide Indexing Event

* Volunteers Index More Than 1 Million Freedman’s Bureau

* Inmates Help With Indexing