St. George Utah FamilySearch Center/Indexing

The St George FamilySearch Center offers instruction and events involving indexing and arbitration. Visitors can receive training on the new web based programs. Mutli-lingual indexing is also supported with special classes in Spanish.

Indexing, in General FamilySearch indexing was introduced to the world with an article about it in the July, 2007 Ensign Magazine. Since that date many thousands of volunteers have indexed multiple millions of records such as census, birth, marriage, death, obituaries, city directories, court records and other records from many countries of the world. The result is that data has been made available to families to properly identify ancestors that otherwise would have remained 'lost' to them. Briefly, here is how the process works: the indexer sits at a computer and calls up some record to be indexed. Then an image of that record appears at the top of the screen. This image is a photocopy of an actual record, such as a birth record. It may be hand-written or typed, quite legible or not. The indexer then types into a form at the bottom of the screen the names, dates, places that he or she sees. When finished with a batch of records it is released to the system where it is compiled, then published to the world to aid in the discovery of our ancestors. One should be aware that, once started and pursued for awhile, indexing becomes quite addicting. Many indexers have indexed hundreds of thousands of records. There is plenty of help at the St George FamilySearch Center for you to learn to be an indexer.

Multi-Lingual Indexing is held at the St George FamilySearch Center on Thursday evenings from 6:00 pm until closing. We index in Italian, Spanish, Portuguese and French, other languages may be included in the future. Missionaries are assigned to this project and are there to teach and help. Crib sheets are provided that give much of the needed interpretation between the languages. At present (summer, 2017) the mentors are Glen and Norma Hovey who served missions in France and Italy, Lynn Ellsworth who served missions in Uruguay and Peru and later taught High School Spanish, and Elder Belnap, who is indexing training coordinator for several St George stakes. About twice per month Elder Howard W Cheney spends the evening working alongside us. Elder Cheney is over all the foreign language indexing in the LDS Church. Hispanic Indexing and Research sessions are held Saturdays from 11:00 am to 3:00 pm. Most Saturdays, these sessions are indexing sessions. Here you’ll find a mixture of experienced and new indexers who work together. Many patrons not of the Hispanic culture or heritage have learned how to do Hispanic Indexing. Training is provided so that a person can learn to do this work. Crib sheets are provided that give much of the needed interpretation between the languages. In all these Spanish Indexing sessions two or three experienced indexers are available to help understand what is needed and to help decipher handwriting. Some High School Spanish is helpful, but not essential. Actually, 90% of all that has been indexed in the past few years are records of English speaking nations, mostly United States, Canada and Great Britain and its Commonwealth. Many millions of records in other languages have not been indexed, here’s an opportunity to perform a very much needed work. About once a month a link is made to a FamilySearch podcast from 1:00 pm to 2:00 pm about some subject of interest to indexers of Hispanic records, after that, indexing resumes. At present (summer, 2017) the mentors are Lynn Ellsworth who served missions in Uruguay and Peru and taught High School Spanish and Elder Belnap who is the area leader for several St George stakes’ indexing training. Sister Yovanna Argote from Bolivia and Sister Josefina Vargas from Mexico contribute valuable assistance during these Saturday sessions.

Web-Based Indexing is the newest way that all FamilySearch indexing will soon be done. It is web-based, so that a separate program doesn’t have to be installed on the computer, laptop, ipad, etc. making indexing much more available worldwide. Meanwhile, at the FamilySearch Library we are finishing indexing the batches that were initiated in the older system. You can browse to FamilySearch Launches New Indexing Website to learn more about the new system.

These sessions are open to everyone – no reservation or prior experience is required. We are anxious to have anyone come and be with us as we collaborate in transcribing the precious information that has been made available to us by FamilySearch. Maintained by: Lynn Ellsworth

Last modified: 6/4/17