Are You Ready?

GEARING UP TO INDEX AND SEARCH THE 1940S CENSUS!

Are you ready for Monday, April 2nd? Do you have all of your tools ready? What about your work schedule? Where are you sending the kids?

Wait a minute – you don’t know what happens on Monday? You must have just returned from another planet or out from under a rock!  It’s the release of the 1940s Census!  A whole army of volunteers (but we need MORE!) has registered to index!  Have you? What are you waiting for? Stop reading (but please bookmark this post) and go register at The 1940 Census – Getting Started!

Let’s get the list in order!

What to tell your employer (or employees if you own the business!)

1. National 1940s day – they must be able to tell you why April 2 is important in order to get off work.
2. You don’t need an excuse – you requested this day off a very long time ago (about the time the 1930 census was released!)
3. You will be “out of pocket” all day and unable to be reached.

Tools needed:

1. Download indexing software (I downloaded mine several weeks ago!)
2. Viewed the tutorials (I did too!)
3. Participated in the 1940s Indexing Simulation (I did that the day it was available)
4. Have indexed other images already (yep – about 1000 names so far!)
5. Computer (You will want to make sure to clean out your cache/cookies; do a defrag so you’ll get optimum speed)
6. A gedcom or .paf or some sort of family history program or report in front of you with the names of those you are searching
7. Steve Morse’s One Step Unified 1940s ED Finder so you can find those Enumeration Districts
8. Along with the names you are looking for, you also have as much information as possible next to the names: what enumeration district(s) you hope to find them in, a street address in order to find them in the ED; who was possibly in the household.
9. Water bottles and snacks – because you have to keep up your strength so you can search AND index constantly.
10. An accurate clock – so you can begin as soon as possible!
11. A charged phone (or battery laptop!) – just in case there is an emergency and you must be reached or you need to reach someone – especially if you need to call someone (a parent/aunt/uncle/cousin) to ask where they or their parents/grandparents were living in 1940!
12. Big sign on your front door that requests visitors not knock or ring bell or solicit. Mail or package deliverers are to leave items at your door but not announce themselves.
13. Several Barney, Caillou, Dinosaur Train, or Sesame Street DVDs to keep the itty bitty ones busy all day.
14. Several Camp Rock, Hannah Montana, iCarly, Wizards of Waverly, Power Rangers, Victorious, Star Wars, etc. DVDs to keep the not so little ones busy after they get home from school.
15. Prepared meals in the fridge with step by step instructions on how to heat so no one bothers you.
16. Ear buds/Ear phones and tons of music so you can listen all day long instead of being distracted by the television, children’s voices, etc.

And don’t forget to get a good night’s sleep the night before so you won’t get worn out on Monday. After all – we have a lot to do!

And most importantly, please INDEX while you are searching!  After all, it’s not every day that history like this happens, and we all should want to be front row center when it does!  You never know where serendipity happens!

PS – I’m supposed to tell you that this post enters me in a contest for prizes – gift cards (and who doesn’t love gift cards!)