I don't know how many of you are interested in the progress of the Family Search Indexing project, but Iowa 1900 is up and available for indexing. While many Nebraskans aren't interested in the state, I know that many did have ancestors who slipped across the river from Iowa at some point, as I have seen a lot in the census listing as birth place, and several of the people I have helped in Omaha recently had a lot of family come from Iowa. If you haven't done the indexing and want to help: it is a volunteer, online project that will make more records available to everyone. Go to _www.Familysearchindexing.org_ (http://www.Familysearchindexing.org) and click on volunteer. You will have a sheet to fill out to indicate who you are and where you are. Just because it is from the LDS Family History Center, you do not have to be a Mormon to help, as the records are from all nationalities and religions, and we are all interested in finding more ancestors, more easily. Second step is to download the template that we will use to index. Takes a few minutes, depending on the speed of our server. Third is to click on the start indexing button. You will at sometime have to make up a password, though they give you a temporary one to start with. The password should be letters, and at least one number & one symbol...but can be any combination that you can remember. (The computer will remember it for you, but it helps to have it easy, in case you use ever forget.) When you get to the start indexing screen: you can download one of their priority projects (usually something they're in a hurry to finish up). Or you can use the button right next to it and select your project (like Iowa 1900 census). You then have 1 week to finish indexing the page (you can stop and come back later in that week, if necessary). If something comes up and you can't get back with in the week, someone else will finish it for you. They won't be mad, but by not letting a page hang out there indefinitely, it keeps the work moving along...and sometimes life does intrude. You can see what you've done in the past on that home page (how many names from what states), and you can set a goal. My goal is to average a page a day...which works out to about 50 names per day. Some days I get several pages, sometimes I don't get any done--but it averages out. They do prefer that you do one a week, most weeks, which isn't hard. We're working off the actual scanned census images right now...some is not really very legible (poor handwriting, poor ink, etc.), and some is wonderful--as you know from previously working with real records. 2 people do each page (and they can't compare what they're doing because they don't know the other person.) If the computer doesn't match, a 3rd person looks at it. No, it still is going to give us some names that we don't recognize as our family because the writing was bad, or the spelling was worse, but it's going to be a good chance to get more materials more readily available on the net. But spread the word to other Iowa based lists that you're on...or people that you know who have ancestors who passed through Iowa. The more volunteers, the more records that can be indexed, and put on line--and we'll all find more ancestors. (They're doing the contents of the granite mountain--that's about 3 million reels of microfilm, and several thousand microfiche cards; plus several major record repositories like some state Hx societies, and the Nat. Archives want them do to records too, so it will mean there is going to be a flood of new stuff available on the internet in the next few years. (Target for the scanning portion of the Granite Mountain Records Vault is to finish scanning in the next 5 1/2 to 6 years....indexing will depend on how many volunteers there are...currently about 32,000, and they figure about 130 thousand people will be helping by the end of the year.) Nebraska will be coming soon. (If you are interested in helping with Nebraska let me know, as they will put it up sooner if they have a good list of volunteers willing to help. I've had about 17 people contact me so far as willing to help with it.) Doing genealogy is going to get a whole lot easier, if we all work together...but we need a lot of help. Karen ************************************** Get a sneak peak of the all-new AOL at http://discover.aol.com/memed/aolcom30tour