Hi, Just received this information to share with you. Sue For immediate use in genealogy society newsletters and bulletins: Complete 1930 Census Now Available at Western Reserve Historical Society When some 30 shipping boxes containing microfilm of the 1930 Census of the United States arrived at the Western Reserve Historical Society early in April, the staff and members of the WRHS Genealogy Committee were ready and waiting. For weeks, committee volunteers had been rearranging the existing microfilm collection to make room for more than 3000 rolls of microfilm, and preparing labels for the microfilm boxes. On April 8, more volunteers assembled in the WRHS library to unpack, sort, label, and file the new microfilms. When the library opened its doors on April 9, the 1930 Census was ready for use by genealogy and family history researchers. Officials believe that the society is the first repository outside the National Archives system to make the entire census available to the public. Leading up to the release of the 1930 Census, WRHS was one of only about twenty repositories nationwide to offer the complete census. With the 1930 Census, new information will be available about grandparents, aunts and uncles, parents, and other relatives in the form of answers to 32 questions asked about and recorded for every person. More information was gathered about people living in the United States in 1930 than in any previous census. The 1930 census data includes information not only about where a person lived, how old they were, and the relationship to the head of the household, but also whether the home was owned or rented, value of the home if owned, age at first marriage, place of birth and native language, citizenship, occupation and employment, and military service, if any. The census even records if there was a radio in the household. Some 117 million people were enumerated in the 1930 census. How to find a particular individual in those millions will be more of a challenge than in previous censuses because only limited indexing is available. We're accustom ed to using Soundex microfilms for the 1880, 1900, 1910, and 1920 censuses and printed indexes or CD indexes for the 1870 and earlier censuses to locate our ancestors. Such complete resources won't be available for the 1930 census, at least initially. Soundexes were completed only for Alabama, Arkansas, Florida, Georgia, Louisiana, Mississippi, North Carolina, South Carolina, Tennessee, and Virginia, plus seven counties in Kentucky and seven counties in West Virginia. The key to finding ancestors in the 1930 Census will be knowing the enumeration district (ED for short) they lived in. The boundaries of an ED were established so that an enumerator could cover it in as little as two weeks or as long as four weeks after the official start date of April 1, 1930. An ED might be several city blocks in densely populated urban areas or two or more townships in sparsely populated areas. If you know where your ancestor lived, the next step is figuring out the ED. Knowing the ED, you can determine what microfilm to look through--and that is what you will have to do: scroll through the microfilm line by line to find the person or persons you're looking for. The Western Reserve Historical Society has acquired the entire set of 2,667 rolls of census film, and all the available soundex microfilm for the 12 southern states. To assist researchers, a number of finding aids are available at the library, including a set of microfilms of ED maps compiled by the Census Bureau. Finally, WRHS library staff and volunteers have been trained to assist visitors with research in the 1930 census microfilm. The Western Reserve Historical Society is at 10825 East Boulevard, Cleveland, Ohio. For more information about the library, its hours, and its genealogy holdings, call 216-721-5722, or visit the society's website at www.wrhs.org and click on Visitor Information รณ Genealogy News Service, Western Reserve Historical Society. ***** Distributed by the Genealogical Committee, Western Reserve Historical Society, Mary Lou Bregitzer, president; Dick Fetzer, vice president; Bill Allen, secretary; and Don Kern, treasurer. If you have questions about the above news feature, contact Wally Huskonen at 440-526-1238 or wallyhuskonen@worldnet.att.net