Thanks Dan. That's excellent news! I had read about that, but
didn't realize how they were going to do it. If anything can be done
by a volunteer effort, it will certainly be by the church!
Jesse
On Sep 21, 2005, at 11:29 PM, Dan Hanks wrote:
Hi folks,
While this note isn't specifically about Open Source software, I
think the direction the church is going with its family history
work is definitely in the open spirit of the Internet (and Open
Source), and wanted to make folks aware of some recent
announcements by the church.
At a recent genealogical conference, the church announced it is
underway to digitize all 2 million+ microfilms in the Granite
Mountain Vault. The church believes it can do this within 6 years
(!). Even better, if I understand correctly, they are planning on
making all these images available online.
The church also plans to extract and index all the information on
these images (Can you imagine being able to search by keyword
through all 2 million of those microfilms?! It gives me chills to
think about that!) It has started a new project called FamilySearch
Indexing (ldsindexing.org). This will allow volunteers worldwide to
use a Java client through their browser to view and extract
information from the microfilm images.
If you're interested in participating, I'd recommned contacting
your stake extraction director, who may be able to provide you with
more information, and possibly with a login to be able to help out.
I've made a couple of blog posts with more links and info:
http://brainshed.com/blog/entry/106.html
http://brainshed.com/blog/entry/107.html
I'm very excited about this. In one presentation, the church
alludes to the next generation of I guess what could be called PAF.
As I read it, PAF as a stand-alone app will continue to exist, but
the church is also developing a new application that will provide a
centralized repository of genelaogical information, and which will
allow collaborative means to provide and verify that information.
I thought folks would be interested to hear about this if you
haven't already,
-- Dan
_______________________________________________
Ldsoss mailing list
[email protected]
http://lists.ldsoss.org/mailman/listinfo/ldsoss
_______________________________________________
Ldsoss mailing list
[email protected]
http://lists.ldsoss.org/mailman/listinfo/ldsoss
