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
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