WANTED: one indexing project manager for the NYC Marriage Index (and other new records)

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Brooke Ganz

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Jun 27, 2016, 5:35:10 PM6/27/16

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Hi guys,

I am really happy to see all the progress and tech love given to a standalone indexing portal for the NYC Marriage Index images. I have no doubt that with a few more months' work, we'll have an awesome open source transcription tool that we can adapt to many genealogical transcription projects. This is especially timely because Reclaim The Records has a lot more files going online, including the first-ever 20th century New Jersey BMD indices going up in the next few weeks. (If you poke around the Internet Archive this week and next week, you can watch me upload the images in real-time, even though the files have not been publicly announced yet, shhhh....)

But the real problem we still face is one of management, not technical proficiency. Who will run the servers and manage an eventual indexing project? Who wants to deal with e-mails of bug reports? Who wants to answer questions from well-meaning but clueless and not-very-tech-proficient indexers using IE 8?

And frankly, who wants to do all this for free, without burning out?

Without this crucial but exhausting position filled, we're building a great tech system that probably no one would use...

Any takers? If so, please speak up, because otherwise ItalianGen is going to start doling out copies of the NYC images to their volunteer indexing crew later this summer. They will probably take years to complete it... :-(

- Brooke

Matt Misbach

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Jun 28, 2016, 11:12:04 AM6/28/16

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That's great news about the New Jersey records, great work Brooke!

You pose some hard questions regarding community support. I think it's very important that we setup a free and open indexing platform that works for ANY record collection no matter where the images are stored. This will allow for broader community inclusion that will increase the potential for people to volunteer and help support the platform. I think we could get some sponsorship (people, time, and maybe money if needed) from some organizations that are looking for an indexing solution for their collections.