Archives Launches New Program to Help Organizations Share Records Online

by Julie Hill

Posted on September 8, 2011

We're happy to announce the new Archives.com Community Contribution Program, which will allow individuals and organizations to easily make their digital indexes of family history collections accessible online! Archives.com will host submitted content at no cost, providing custodians of digital genealogical records with a free and easy way to reach an audience of millions.

Contributors may be anyone with digital indexes of genealogical records, and may be individuals or community-based organizations such as libraries, archives, and genealogical societies. Contributions must be digital indexes of records in Excel or .txt format. Examples of appropriate record types include vital, church, obituary, military, and land records.

We understand that many individuals and societies want to share their valuable family history collections with everyone, but may lack the resources needed to put those records online. Archives.com is committed to increasing access to collections, and we are excited to help those who share this goal! Records provided through the Community Contribution Project will be made available on Archives.com to both non-members, and members alike.

Interested in participating? If your digital indexes are less than 2GB you may upload them to our DropBox at dropbox.inflection.com. Larger than 2GB? Mail them via CD or DVD to:

Inflection
555 Twin Dolphin Drive, Suite 200
Redwood City, CA 94065
Attn. Community Contributions

When submitting your indexes, please be sure to include your name, the name of your organization, the record type of the index (i.e. birth, death, marriage), the locality (city, state, county, etc.), as well as the years it covers. Additionally, please be sure to clearly title each record field in the index.

If you don't have digital indexes, but would still like to participate in the program, we're here to help. Those with records on microfilm or microfiche that they'd like to see on Archives.com may apply for digitization and indexing equipment. To apply, email [email protected] with information about you and your organization, the record set you would like to digitize, the resources you have available for digitization, and the timeframe of when you would like to digitize the collection.

Have questions? FGS Conference attendees can stop by and see us this week at booths 621 and 720! Not at the conference? Feel free to email us your questions at [email protected].

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