Wednesday, August 19, 2015

Canadian Genealogy News 19 August 2015

 

 Here are some news items which have come across my desk this morning - 

Worldwide Indexing Event has ended 

FamilySearch has said that a total of 82,039 volunteers helped to “Fuel the Find” during FamilySearch’s Worldwide Indexing Event, held August 7-14, 2015.

Though short of the goal of 100,000 participants, the effort produced a number of remarkable achievements, among them an 89% increase in non-English language indexing activity, Volunteers produced more than 12.2 million indexed (transcribed) and 2.3 million arbitrated (reviewed) records during the weekly event. As with all records indexed by FamilySearch indexing volunteers, those indexed during the global event will be made freely searchable at FamilySearch.

For the Worldwide Indexing Event, FamilySearch sought volunteers who could decipher records recorded in a variety of languages, with a focus on French, Italian, Portuguese and Spanish. Volunteers from all over the world exceeded expectations by processing over 2,183,212 non-English records including 1,380,684 in Spanish, 147,568 in Portuguese, 226,734 in French, and116,835 in Italian.

FamilySearch heartily thanks all of the volunteers for their contributions and dedication and encourages anyone interested in participating to join the ongoing indexing initiative at www.FamilySearch.org/indexing 

Digitization of the Canadian Expeditionary Force (CEF) update 

And digitization of the Canadian Expeditionary Force (CEF) service files is underway and a substantial number of digitized files have been added to their website as part of the Government of Canada First World War commemoration activities at the Library and Archives Canada. 

They will add new files every two weeks, as the CEF digitization initiative is a priority for them. LAC will ensure that Canadians have access to the files throughout the digitization process, scheduled to be completed by the end of 2018.

As of today, 181,338 of 640,000 files are available in the database. Latest box digitized box: #2490, name: Devos

For more information on this initiative, please consult the Fact Sheet: Digitization of Canadian Expeditionary Force Service Files

Meanwhile, happy researching!

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Check the Canadian Week in Review (CWR) every Monday morning for the latest in Genealogy, Heritage, and History news in Canada.

If you missed last week’s edition, it is at http://genealogycanada.blogspot.com/2015/08/canadian-week-in-review-cwr-17-august.html

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