August Indexing News

July and August Word Drought

There haven't been any posts to this blog for some time, since June as a matter of fact, and I apologize to my followers and those of you who occasionally read my posts. This has been a trying time for me. We had a death in the family the end of July which warranted a long trip to PA for a funeral. In August my husband had a total knee replacement and I am still busy taking care of him. I have to admit, to all of you, that I have not been doing much indexing. Stake wide our numbers are very low and I don't know why that is happening. I am praying that we can regain our momentum now that the youth have gone back to school.

I read several blogs about indexing and Ancestry.com and FamilySearch  they contain very exciting news about the future of indexing and family history. I would like to share some of that news with you.

 Boston, MA Temple taken by Bishop Bob Wooley

Cool  Family History Library Concepts of the Future

Diane C. Loosle is the new director of the Family History Library in SLC. "She is the first female director and the most qualified and capable to ever serve in this position" according to Don Anderson, FamilySearch Senior VP. Loosle's top priorities is the take all the Family History Research Centers and make them into Family Discovery Centers. She said " they need to offer fun experiences and activities for the entire family that will increase love, appreciation and understanding of their ancestors." The Family History Centers need to be more youth and family oriented. Changes will include the follow :

• Oral History Studios - where you can record your oral history and take it home on a jump drive.
• Photo Scanning stations -photos or documents can be scanned and can be uploaded into your Family Search account. Then you can go home and tag people and attach them to your tree.
• A Community Wall - a large touchscreen monitor  reflecting the locale and its history. You could share photos, recipes and so forth. It's your wall, your story.
• Story Center for Children - an interactive pop-up 3-D storybook.
• Monitors that will tell you things about your name- what countries your surname is found, etc.
• Computer stations - where you can still research your records on the internet.
• Time Machine - much like the holodeck of Star Trek, they hope it will be able to take people to places, such as an old blacksmith shop to learn what it was like to be a blacksmith in different time periods, 1830, 1850, etc. 

This sounds very exciting and a fun way to get the youth and families more involved with family history.  In the next 12 months FamilySearch, the Church, hopes to set up 3 - 5 of these new DISCOVERY CENTERS across the country. There is already one that you can get a sneak peak at  in Seattle Washington. Three Oral History Studios are already in operation in San Diego CA, Riverton, UT and Logan UT.  

I think this is a wonderful direction for Family Research to take.  At the present time the average age of a patron at the Family Search Center is 50 years, and they say that the youth don't feel welcome.  We are trying to make the youth feel welcome in our center and have offered many indexing sessions with various youth groups. Maybe more will come when it becomes a fun activity.

Last Wednesday night I was very pleased to see a young man from Quail Creek Ward come in to index for an hour. I was happy to be there to help him, and also a person that had never indexed was there and he wanted to learn, so I helped him. It is inspiring to me to be able to use my talents to help people with their family history research and with Indexing, which helps so many others. Our goal in the Stake is to help anyone who wants to index, learn how. How many callings have you had that offers so much help?