Join Italians and Italian Fans for a Record-Setting Weekend!

We have received this exciting news from FamilySearch

“FamilySearch International, Salt Lake City Italian natives and those with Italian language skills, Italian ancestors, or a love of all things Italian are invited to help index (transcribe) historic Italian records this weekend (Sept. 13-15) to make them freely searchable on FamilySearch.org.

The event, part of the ongoing Italian Ancestors Project sponsored by the National Archives of Italy and FamilySearch, will unite participants from around the world in an attempt to set a new two-day volunteer mark of 35,000 records (approximately 100,000 ancestor names) indexed.

The event will start Friday, September 13 at 6:00 p.m. (MDT) and end Sunday, September 15, at 6:00 p.m. (MDT). To volunteer, or for details and status updates throughout the event, visit the Italian Ancestors Facebook event page.

About the Italian Ancestors Project

The Italian Ancestors Project, jointly sponsored by the National Archives of Italy and FamilySearch, is the largest historic Italian records preservation and access initiative ever.

Through this unprecedented effort, more than 115 million historic birth, marriage, and death records from Italy’s civil registration (1802 to 1942) containing some 500 million names of Italian ancestors, will be digitized, indexed (transcribed) and made freely searchable online.
Indexing of these valuable records is being provided by thousands of volunteers worldwide. Working from their homes at their own pace, volunteers have already made more than two million records available. Thousands more volunteers are needed”.

For more information or to volunteer, visit www.familysearch.org/italian-ancestors.

Community Historical Recognition Program

Did you know that Canada has the Community Historical Recognition Program under which they develop all-exclusive programs of the Chinese, Italian, South Asian, Jewish, Ukrainian communities of the country? Apparently, they plan to cover other communities in the future.

The Community Historical Recognition Program was established in 2008 to acknowledge and to educate all Canadians about how certain ethno-cultural communities were affected by wartime discriminatory measures and immigration restrictions applied in Canada.

I took the time to look through the different programs, and it appears to be quite well done. They have taken different aspects of the communities, and have centralized them into one area.

To learn about the Community Historical Recognition Program, click on the www.CIC.gc.ca/CHRP

Do You Read/Speak Italian?

FamilySearch.org is looking for people who can read/speak Italian, so that they can transcribe and put the rest of the Italian records online. Here is the press release that they put out the other day .

“FamilySearch launched a historic partnership with the National Archives of Italy in December 2011 to digitally preserve and index its civil registration records (birth, marriage, and death) for all states from 1802 to 1940. Since the project launch more than 24 million images have been published, and 4 million names have been made searchable on FamilySearch.org.

But there are 115 million historic Italian documents with over 500 million names remaining to index and publish. Tens of thousands of volunteers are needed. To meet this opportunity, FamilySearch is requesting help from indexers and arbitrators who speak or read Italian or a closely related language, such as Spanish, or who are willing to learn a handful of simple Italian words and phrases to help facilitate the initiative.

Descendants of Italians and Italy historic and genealogy societies are especially invited to participate to help accelerate the publication of this valuable record set”.

Interested individuals, societies, or groups should visit www.familysearch.org/italian-ancestors to learn more.

To search the completed Italian records online and to learn more about reading Italian records, visit familysearch.org/italy.