More States Online for Auditing in FamilySearch's 1950 US Census Community Project; Waiting for Michigan

Ancestry and FamilySearch are not to Michigan yet ... but they are making progress running the states through Ancestry's AI/OCR to create its own generated index.

As soon as we hear from FamilySearch that the indexing is available for the state of Michigan we will let you know. And as soon as we learn how to set up the Group Functionality once it is available for the 1950 US Census Community Project we will let you know how to join the Macomb County Genealogy Group's group for reviewing and auditing Ancestry's AI/OCR generated index.

So be patient for auditing to begin. In the meantime, try using the National Archive's AI/OCR generated name index. It is quite impressive how well it turned out. Yes, there are some errors -- if you find some submit a correction.

See you soon someday at our favorite library!
LE

More Options Becoming Available for Browsing the 1950 US Federal Census

And so the race began ... at 12:01 a.m. the 1950 U.S. Federal Census was released to the public using a new, dedicated website that provided an Artificial Intelligence/Optical Character Recognition generated index.

At an Amazon web services site, bulk downloads of the National Archives and Records Administration digitized microfilm images began downloading to Ancestry, MyHeritage, FindMyPast, FamilySearch and likely others.

It seems MyHeritage won the race to provide the free digital images of the 1950 Census on its website. There is no index yet but the images are there to browse. [Remember Michigan residents have free access to MyHeritage Library Edition through www.mel.org the Michigan Electronic Library.]

Ancestry has the 1950 Census images for 19 states already online for browsing. Again for free. And according to the Ancestry blog, their own AI/OCR index to be audited by FamilySearch.org volunteers will be free too. FamilySearch is also downloading and uploading the 1950 Census to its website. You can see this in the Search Images area by searching United States or your locations. Or from the 1950 US Census Community Project page, Explore Images. Both Ancestry and FamilySearch are a work in progress. There are likely other websites going the bulk download route.

See you someday soon at our favorite library!
LE

Here is the New Dedicated Website for the 1950 United States Federal Census

Here is the link to the National Archives' dedicated website for the 1950 US Federal census which will be released at 12:01 a.m., April 1, 2022, after the mandated 72-year delay. No waiting for the start of the business day (9 a.m.) this time.

https://1950census.archives.gov/

Have fun searching for your family!

See you soon someday at our favorite library!
LE

 

Ready ... Set ... Tomorrow is Less Than 24 hours Away for the 1950 Census Release

Are you excited for tomorrow?

You do recall that TO-MORR-OW is the release day of the 1950 U.S. Federal Census? No, fooling. The 72-year delayed release of this census enumeration is April 1, 2022.

It is the first census to be released with an index.* * Meaning an Artificial Intelligence / Optical Character Recognition of handwriting generated index.

Will the 1950 census index be perfect? Probably not. But you can provide corrections. So be flexible and have an idea what letters could have been misread as: an a, e, o being read as one of the others. An m, n, w, v not quite read correctly. And even an R read as a K because the ink was very faint on the top. Be creative.

But if you have done your prep work for this census and you know where your people are and the index search is not finding them, then do the search by location or even enumeration district.

Where do I find this census? Keep an eye on the 1950 Census page of the National Archives website. It is there that the link to the new, dedicated 1950 website will be released tomorrow, April 1. Once we see that website URL address is released we will post it here too.

So what do I do tomorrow? After finding the link to the new, dedicated website and going to it, you will decide how to want to search. By name, location or Enumeration District. To get some hints, watch the short presentation the National Archives hosted yesterday, March 30. The recording is already up. However, the chat from the presentation is not available that we can see.

What if ... Yeah, there is a possibility that the new website might crash a bit or a little slow. Be patient. Everyone be patient. Come back later at an odd time of day, or another day, or keep trying.

So get yourself ready for tomorrow. Clear some time from other obligations so you can search for your family in 1950.

Good Luck Everyone!

See you soon someday at our favorite library!
LE