1940 U.S. Census Community Project

The 1940 U. S. Census Community Project is sponsored in part by Archives.com, FamilySearch, and findmypast.com. Society sponsors are the National Genealogical Society (NGS), Federation of Genealogical Societies (FGS), and the Association of Professional Genealogists (APG).

Together they are hosting the indexing initiative for the 1940 U.S. Census. When the census becomes publicly available online on April 2, it will be pages of completely unindexed census records. Many of us who have been seeking our ancestors online for the past 8 or 10 years have become very comfortable with, maybe casual about, how easy it is to find our ancestors in records offered at Archives.com, FamilySearch, findmypast.com, and other online sites, especially if we haven't indexed before. Perhaps we even take the indexed census records for granted.
Will we be surprised when we finally see the pages of the 1940 census? Will we know where to look to find our ancestors? Will we wish its pages were indexed already?

Indexing can't begin until April 2, but you can prepare now by downloading and installing the software at 1940 U.S. Census Community Project. After you do that you can try your hand at indexing a "batch" of records. Start now!

I've always loved the saying, "Many hands make light work."


Census image above from Measuring America: The Decennial Census From 1790 to 2000, p. 62.
.