Volunteer

If you have some time and want to help, you can start right here on Seabrook by mentoring a neighbor who is just beginning their family history journey.  If you are interested in helping a budding genealogist get started, please contact Denise Doyon at diggingtogether@yahoo.com.  You can work one-on-one with another Seabrook resident, either during D.I.R.T.'s regular meetings, or find another schedule that works well for you and your "newbie".

As you all know, the internet completely changed the face of genealogical research.  Sites such as Ancestry.com, Family Search, RootsWeb (just to scratch the surface) are gold mines of information.  But the volumes of data available through these sites didn't get there by magic.  It was a long, slow process driven by the human engine of volunteers.  It all comes down to a volunteer with a computer reading through one entry of one page of one document at a time and entering the information into a computer-based form (provided to you by the organization) so that it then becomes available on the internet.

Two groups that I have personal experience with are the National Archives Citizen Archivist program and the Family Search Indexing project.  Both programs offer volunteers the opportunity to help grow the world of digital data, at their own speed, on their own time.  For more information on what you can do to help, please visit the sites.  I have posted the links below:

National Archives
http://www.archives.gov/citizen-archivist/

Family Search Indexing
https://familysearch.org/indexing/

If you are looking for other places where your time and talent can be well-spent giving back something to the community of genealogical research that has been of such great help to your own family history project, Cyndi's List outlines many possibilities.  The link to that website follows:

Cyndi's List
http://www.cyndislist.com/volunteer-projects/miscellaneous/

All of us know the frustration of searching for information in world where names are often misspelled, dates transposed and numbers look like hieroglyphics.  Obviously the information that finally makes it into digital form is only as good as the dedicated volunteer who transcribed it.  You can help make a difference.

Consider volunteering!

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