Friday, April 6, 2012

#1940Census Status Update for 5 April 2012

Ancestry.com didn’t seal up 3rd place Thursday. They increased from 66% to 86%. They will almost certainly finish today (Friday).

FamilySearch nearly doubled the amount of data online, advancing from 14% to 26%.

FIndMyPast.com and RootsPoint.com remain at zero.

Archives.com put together a graphic showing how spectacularly large the traffic was to Archives.gov during the first two days of the census launch. See the graphic here.

FamilySearch map of indexing project completionAs the census image race winds down, the indexing race is heating up. Accordingly, FamilySearch has posted a heat map of the United States. The darkness of each state indicates how complete the indexing project is. Hover the mouse over a state and a popup shows how complete the indexing project is.

Currently Delaware is 99%, Colorado is 72%, Kansas is 30%, Oregon is 25%, and the remaining indexing projects are 1 to 4%.

Let the next race begin!

4 comments:

  1. Seems disingenuous for you to call Ancestry 3rd, when they have the highest quality images up, as well as have always been reachable, when Archives.com (the NARA site) wasn't even usable that first day, and barely improved the 2nd day. Personally, I would rather get something (even if they aren't all there) than sit waiting endlessly for empty images.

    Additionally, you haven't mentioned that Ancestry has the only currently searchable indexes up (except the 500 or so records from somebody else)

    Do you have an axe to grind from your time at Ancestry?

    The least you could do for you readers is provide a balanced opinion. IMO the best experience over the whole 1940 excitement is and has been Ancestry.com

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  2. Dear Rowdy,

    It's interesting to hear you think I had an axe to grind against Ancestry. Another writer accused me of being unfair to Archives.com because I wanted Ancestry.com to win.

    You do bring up some excellent points. I should clarify that I assigned places based on the order in which the horses crossed the finish line, not for how pretty they looked when they did so.

    Perhaps Archives.com should have been disqualified since they started at the finish line while everyone else started at the starting line. Hit head on by a water cannon, they stumbled backwards while the rest of the field closed down on them. That they fought their way back and crossed the finish line more than a day ahead of Ancestry.com earned them a second place finish, despite the deluge that continued unabated.

    Don't give up on your favorite horse just yet. In the race for indexes, Ancestry.com has established an early lead.

    --The Insider

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  3. I'm very sorry to read such tacky, childish remarks. Sounds like some of our politicians.

    In the case of public records...nobody is in the lead. The records should be public and not available at all to the greedy companies that charge unsuspecting people horrendous fees to access from their own homes.

    ReplyDelete
    Replies
    1. The Records ARE free. However, to think that it doesn't cost millions of dollars to index, host, and serve customers is naive. Do you think the extra benefits you get to sit at home and just search for a name is free?

      If you want the free version, go to your local library and browse the census images on microfilm.

      If you are unsuspecting that companies want to make money by providing a service -- that's pretty un-American.

      There seems to be a prevailing attitude that if it's on the internet, it should be free. It would behoove those who think so to do some research on bandwidth costs, costs of servers, cost to index millions of records, cost of thousands of servers to provide search results, and cost to hundreds of developers to create software to make experiences and searching better, easier, and more efficient.

      Delete

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