What We Need to Give to Our Descendants

A person's ancestry is a personal and yet valuable treasure. And, it should be shared, freely, with everyone -- at least, for privcacy purposes, all family before the great grandparents. However, much genealogical materials are being lost. That means future generations will lose the benefit of having them. I am talking about tombstone lettering becoming unreadable, old newspapers crumbling to dust, people pitching the family history materials of a deceased family member, public records destroyed by fire or flood or tornado. family photographs fading, and the list goes on. Once these things are gone, they are gone.

What should we do about this? There is only one answer: everything of genealogical value must be digitized into a computer. Then, it is all made available, FOR FREE, to everyone.

But putting all this material together this is a monsterously huge, expensive (billions?) and time-consuming (decades?) endeavor. But, like so many other big issues our society faces today, it needs to be done. And who can argue against preserving families for future generations?

A Proposal

1. A non-profit organization needs to be established just for this purpose
2. All information digitized by this organization should be available for free to the public (like the LDS church has done)
3. A structured manner of the data must be established at the beginning. Here is one way:
• Every digitized document must be labeled to identify where the original document is located and when it was digitized
• Each document must have all of its genealogical information carefully extracted into a pre-determined format so that it can be put into a searchable database
• Similar to an Internet Wiki, the extracted information must allow anyone to add comments to it and/or link it to other related extracted information
4. Two states should be the pilot for this endeavor, this allows the process to be learned and smoothed over before the other states are done
5. Large central computers with sufficient capacity (it grows over time) will be linked to the Internet. Appropriate software for accessing the data is on these central computers.
6. Because of the possibility of identity theft, only information before 1940 should be included except for such things as death records, obituaries, tombstones and the like
7. It will take from 15 to 30 years to initially complete all states
8. Over the years, information after 1940 should be digitized. By this point, the available information would be well documented as to its availability. And, the volume would be smaller than the initial round of digitizing. This is similar to how every ten years the U.S. Census Bureau releases another census.

How Would The Digitizing Process Work?

There would certainly be much behind-the-scenes tasks going on such as administrative, equipment maintenance, recruitment, trainers, oversight, etc. But here are the highights of the main tasks:

• A survey is needed of what materials are available in each state to digitized. Some will be in private hands and permission is needed from each of them.
• The appropriate equipment needs to be purchased and tested. This equipment would include laptops, scanners, digital cameras and a very large capacity central computer. Since this endeavor will last many years, equipment will become outdated over time and newer, better, faster equipment will become available.
• Procedures for digitizing needs to be established.
• An army of people would need to be gathered and trained on the procedures of how to properly use the equipment and perform the established procedures for digitizing.
• A schedule of which states will be done in which order needs to be determined.
• The trained people would digitize the identified materials per state.
• The digitized information is uploaded to the central computers.
• Quality control is done to assure:
  • all available material was indeed digitized (that is, did anything get missed?)
  • is everything legible?
• Highly trained certified persons would extract from the digitized records the individual data elements
• Anyone can specify that two or more data elements are for the same person or that two or more persons are related

What Happens to the Digitized Information Once it is Available?

What Information Should Be Digitized?

These types of information sources should be digitized. Note that the number after each type denotes primary (1) or secondary (2) information.

1. Adoption/Guardianship [1]
2. Association, certification [2]
3. Association, membership [2]
4. Association, position held [2]
5. Birth [1]
6. Census, federal [2]
7. Census, mortality schedule [2]
8. Census, state [2]
9. Church, membership and/or positions held [2]
10. Church, minutes [2]
11. Church: baptism/christening [2]
12. Church: marriage [2]
13. Court Appearance [1]
14. Death [1]
15. Directory, city [2]
16. Education (attended any grade level) [1]
17. Education, graduation/degree/major/honors [1]
18. Election Results [1]
19. Estate, administration [1]
20. Estate, inventory [1]
21. Estate, settlement [1]
22. Family bible [2]
23. Freeman [2]
24. Honor/Award [2]
25. Immigration [1]
26. Interment, funeral service [2]
27. Interment, obituary [2]
28. Interment, tombstone/records [2]
29. Land, deed [1]
30. Land, purchase/sale [1]
31. Land, transaction [1]
32. License, driver's [1]
33. License, occupational [1]
34. License, professional [1]
35. Marriage [1]
36. Marriage, announcement [2]
37. Marriage, banns/bond [2]
38. Marriage, divorce/annulment [1]
39. Marriage, intentions [2]
40. Meeting (of an organization) Minutes [2]
41. Military (discharged/mustered out) [2]
42. Military (enlistment/mustered in) [2]
43. Military (promotion) [2]
44. Military (war/battles) [2]
45. Military pension [1]
46. Naturalization of citizenship [1]
47. Oath Taken [2]
48. Occupation/Job,employee/pension [2]
49. Photograph [2]
50. Residence, lived at [2]
51. Residence, ship passenger [2]
52. Residence, warning out [2]
53. Taxes, assessment/payment [1]
54. Town Meeting Minutes [1]
55. Will, inclusion/heir [1]
56. Will, proven [1]
57. Will, written [1]
58. Witness [1]

Proposed Schedule of States by Year