MAWORCES-L Archives

Archiver > MAWORCES > 2008-03 > 1205358657


From: "K. Sullivan" <>
Subject: Re: [MAWORCES] Ancestry.com
Date: Wed, 12 Mar 2008 17:50:57 -0400
References: <21440.87464.qm@web53711.mail.re2.yahoo.com>
In-Reply-To: <21440.87464.qm@web53711.mail.re2.yahoo.com>


Very interesting, and I wouldn't be surprised if it's true. But do you have
a source for the information that Ancestry has outsourched their
transcribing? I'd really like to know.

Karen

-----Original Message-----
From: [mailto:]
On Behalf Of Sandy Blakley
Sent: Wednesday, March 12, 2008 3:18 PM
To: Massachusetts Worcester
Subject: [MAWORCES] Ancestry.com

>From what I understand, the agreement between rootsweb and ancestry when
rootsweb sold their site to ancestry was that all of their databases would
remain free to view (though filled with tons of ads from ancestry) and
anything donated to rootsweb would remain free to view. I hope they continue
to honor their agreement.

Ancestry is very agressive. But they will have some competition soon as
the LDS Church, who originally donated alot of their work to ancestry, is
currently working on digitizing all of their records in the Salt Lake City
Library to bring online at their own website, www.familysearch.org and has a
huge volunteer operation going on now that anyone can help with to create
indexing for all of these images. They are working presently on all of the
censuses. If you want to help, go to www.familysearchindexing.org and it's
simple to get going. They give you free software to download and tutorials
on how to use it. Then you download an image at a time to do at your own
pace. Usually takes about 45 mins. to do a page. You have up to a week to do
each image, so you can squeeze it into your spare time. Each page is done by
two different people and then compared. If there are any differences, it
goes to an arbitrator to decide which interpretation is correct, so the
greatest possible
accuracy is their goal. It will be wonderful when all of their resources
are available to view, and it will be FREE to everyone! I've already seen a
few images popping up in their library catalog which you can see online at
www.familysearch.org It's really exciting!

The clock is ticking for ancestry.com! If you've ever wondered why it is
so hard to find names in the indexes for ancestry, it's because they hire
cheap help from India and other Asian countries to do their transcribing.
It's hard enough for us to read some of the old handwriting on faded films
in our own language, but add into the mix someone coming from a foreign
language background and you have a mess! One of our Italian families from
Worcester, Pasquale and Christina DeBonis, came up totally unrecognizable in
their index, when we finally found it!! I knew the family was there, ever
since they arrived from Italy til the day they died, they lived on the same
street, in the same house, but I could not for the life of me find them in
the index. Finally I had to resort to using advance searching methods, and
go through the individual family names one by one until I finally found one
that connected us to the right family. Whew! I notified ancestry, and they
put a note on it
for an alternate transcribed name so others could find it more easily in
the future.

Sandy



Sandra Lee Blakley
336 South 30th St.
Philomath, OR 97370
541-929-2259


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