Wednesday, March 25, 2009

Ancestry.com Debuts World Archives Project

Online genealogical service Ancestry.com revealed Wednesday that it has started an initiative aimed at digitally preserving millions of important historical records. Ancestry.com said the initiative, called the World Archives Project, will allow people from anywhere in the world to transcribe historical documents at their convenience and from their home computers. Ancestry.com explained that contributors will use a free transcription program to process select historical documents—ranging from naturalization records to ship manifests—by typing in information from scanned images. Any online indexes that result from the project will be available for free on Ancestry.com, the company noted. Ancestry.com is a subsidiary of Provo, Utah-based The Generations Network Inc.