Indexing Challenge was a success...sort of!

Thoughout the night we had over 50 people come to our house to index a batch.

Okay half of those were kids who ran around

and the server was overwhelmed and we had a hard time getting on and finding a batch

But we had a great time and a lot of new people learned about indexing.

That is success! 

From Family Search:

FamilySearch volunteers are amazing! On July 20th and 21st, FamilySearch indexers and arbitrators from around the world joined together to set an international record for the greatest number of indexing participants in a single day! We hoped to have an unprecedented 50,000 contributors in a 24 hour period. FamilySearch volunteers excelled, surpassing that goal by 16,511! That’s right—66,511 participants in one day! Incredible! We are grateful for the patience and persistence of many volunteers who faced technical difficulties due to an overwhelming response.

These generous indexers and arbitrators made a true difference. Each record and each name indexed and arbitrated matters. It only takes one to open the door to linking generations of families together. Without question, thousands of lives will be changed as a result of this day’s effort.

While the focus for this challenge was on the total number of participants, a tremendous amount of indexing and arbitration work was accomplished as well. Here are the results for the number of records indexed and arbitrated. 


Indexed: 4,682,746
Arbitrated: 941,932
Total Records Processed: 5.7 million 

Our ancestors deserve to be remembered. You can be proud to be the one who made the difference for someone else who is looking for their ancestors. Because of you, they will know the joy of adding a new branch to their family tree. Thank you!


And keep indexing! More names and stories-especially from obituaries-are ready to be indexed by you and discovered by researchers worldwide. One volunteer, one document, one name can make all the difference to someone looking for his or her family.