27 April 2017

Ancestry's World Archives Project Update

Ancestry has published an update on its volunteer-powered indexing World Archives Project covering the last year.
In 2016 405,134 image sets were indexed for a total of 15,234,403 records
So far in 2017 80,180 image sets have been indexed for a total of 3,882,024 records.

Find a list of completed projects at http://www.ancestry.com/wiki/index.php?title=World_Archives_Project,_Live_Projects

Selected active indexing projects, all considered to be of average difficulty and of likely interest to readers of this blog, are:

Bedfordshire, England, Workhouse and Poor Law Records
Belfast, Northern Ireland, The Belfast Newsletter (Birth, Marriage and Death Notices), 1738-1925 (Part 3)
Ontario, Canada, The Ottawa Journal (Birth, Marriage and Death Notices), 1885-1980
UK, Absent Voters Lists (Part 1).

There's also a UK, Historical Photographs project assessed as easy.

4 comments:

Lesley Anderson said...

Thanks for posting this John - I think people forget that there are lots of free indexes on Ancestry due to the good works of the volunteer community! As a researcher, I thank them for participating to make these records available!

AlisoninVancouver said...

Are these records actually free, or only the indexes? I have a UK Ancestry membership. I searched for one of the completed Canadian indexes and found the person I was looking for. But when I tried to look at the actual record, it required me to have a World Membership.

Thanks
Alison, Vancouver

Lesley Anderson said...

Hi Alison, The indexes are free and yes you need to be a subscriber to see the full digitized record. However, if you are not, you can access it by taking out a free 2-week trial, go to an organization that does have access, i.e. archives or library or pay for a monthly or yearly subscription. Or wait until there's free access around an event - like we just had "Commonwealth records" available for free this month. Hope this helps!

AlisoninVancouver said...

Done all of those from time to time - interesting to see if it would let me do it again. I wait until I've quite a few things to look at to make the best use of the free trial.

Thanks
Alison