Change is Difficult, One Must Adapt

This coming week I will celebrate my one-year blogiversary. This has been a most amazing journey. When you mix in other activities of this week it is difficult to comprehend the amount of knowledge and growth my current projects require. So, tonight I go to my blog site and discover that it has been totally revamped.  I was not ready for this, and yet in a few minutes I began to navigate my way around the new format. One of the most frustrating things about using the Internet is nothing ever stays the same.




Gopher Genealogy now contains 113 posts and on my one year date I hope to write number 115. Followers remain at 65 and the number of page views is about 8500 for the year. While those are not big numbers for well-known bloggers, they are consistent and encouraging for me. What the blog really means to me is an opportunity to share with others experiences that leave me in awe and inspire them to reflect on similar experiences in their own work.

This weeks serendipity moments have to do with the 1940 census and the impact on those around us. On Wednesday I went to lunch with relatives in Sherwood, Oregon. We met at the home of one of our lunch trio. I shared with the one who lives there the census sheet with her on it as a child, with her parents. Then I showed her the sheet with her grandmother and cousin on it. She took far more interest in it that I had imagined, so I offered to leave the copies with her. Then I handed her and our other companion the Indexing flyers to encourage them to participate in this work. I was amazed how interested they were in taking part in this project. Not just genealogists appreciate the importance of indexing these records.

My participation in the 1940 census indexing project has been fun, challenging and enjoyable. Yesterday I reached 3000 lines or 75 batches. So far no email congratulations from familysearch, but that is fine. My arbitration rate is still 96%. Tonight I downloaded five more batches for Massachusetts. My main goal is two batches a day, and I have been able to do that or more for the last eighteen days. I do review the arbitration results to help understand things that I can do differently.

There are now twelve states close to being finished. Due to some arbitration glitches three have hovered at 99% for several days, Oregon being one of them. These twelve are no longer available for downloading batches, but there are thirty-nine others that are open for indexing. Total indexing is at 14.57%.

How are you doing at indexing? Are you sharing serendipity indexing moments with your family and friends? Please continue to spread the word and encourage others to participate.