From Deseret News archives:
Groups partner to digitize genealogists' 'gold mine'
Work on the initial pilot project to digitize, index and make available the first 3,150 of the pension files has begun (comprising some 500,000 pages), utilizing two service missionary couples from the LDS Church, according to Wayne Metcalfe, director of FamilySearch Record Services. Each camera crew can record 5,000 to 10,000 images per week, he said, and more service missionaries are on the way to help with the project.
Once the pilot project is complete, FamilySearch will work in conjunction with Footnote.com to digitize and index all 1,280,000 Civil War and later widows' files in the series. The Civil War pension records are the most highly requested collection at the National Archives, Metcalfe said, and are currently available only at the National Archives Building in Washington, D.C.
The files offer a rich source of information about ordinary American citizens of the time and include supporting documents such as affidavits, depositions of witnesses, marriage certificates, birth records, death certificates and pages from family Bibles.
After digitization, the documents will be indexed and posted online by Footnote.com and can be accessed for a fee for the first five years the records are available, Metcalfe said. "That's how the company plans to cover its costs. It allows them to recoup their costs." The index to the record will be available free on FamilySearch.org, and after five years, the collection itself will be available free at FamilySearch.
The agreement with the National Archives specifies FamilySearch will digitize all 1,280,000 military widows pension files in the coming years, he said.
James Hastings, director of Access Programs at the National Archives, said, "For decades the National Archives has helped thousands of researchers gain access to this rich trove of records in Washington. Thanks to this agreement with FamilySearch, this valuable information will now be available to millions of users around the world in a far more accessible format."
Metcalfe said part of the challenge of digitizing is the size of the military pension collection, which at the current rate of work would take "about 350 camera years" to image, he said. "It's just huge. There are smaller projects like the Southern Claim records or the Freedman Bureau records that are much smaller collections and could be made available over the next couple of years."
Even people who are not experienced genealogists will find the collection interesting, Metcalfe said. "Once you get them indexed so you can look them up by name, you can go through and see a physical description" of anyone in the database, including height, weight, hair and eye color and other detailed physical descriptions.
Often a person's signature is part of the record, and some records that may be digitized in the future — like passport applications — contain photographs of the applicants.
"This will have a real impact on people even if you're simply a novice," Metcalfe said. "For the avid genealogist, it's a gold mine."
E-mail: carrie@desnews.com
