Not quite ready to throw out your college essays, old dance photos, and bills from the previous century? Kindex has a solution for you. Not just for old family records, Kindex is great for any record or source you want to preserve, access, or share. Here are some of our favorite ideas.
1. Declutter
Create a living family archive with document collections for each family member. Scan school papers, calendars, awards, art, and report cards. Scan that growing pile of back-to-school notices, calendars, and checklists you can’t seem to get through. Have a pile of random papers you’re saving because you might need them someday? Scan them. Then throw them away. Okay, most of them.
2. Collaborate on a cookbook
Scan your favorite recipes, invite your friends to do the same, then add them to a Kindex archive. Collaborate together in transcribing old, handwritten recipe cards into a searchable database of recipes.
3. Organize receipts, bills, and other yucky stuff
Bills, receipts, and statements are by far my least favorite form of clutter. Yet, I can’t seem to throw them away. Scan, add to your Kindex archive, add metadata (single or batch form), and notes. Viola! You have a searchable archive. Now start shredding.
4. Share family trusts and other private records
Scan your family trust papers and add them to your a private Kindex archive. Invite board members to the archive where they can search and access the records.
5. Create a personal archive
Start your own private, personal archive and add special records like letters, diaries, and photos. Can’t part with your college essays, teenage-angst poetry drafts, and embarrassing love notes? Scan and archive on Kindex – before your kids find them.
6. Start a research project
Have a special project or hobby? Organize, transcribe, and search digitized content and sources on a private or public Kindex archive. Research alone, or invite other researchers to collaborate.
7. Teach about history
Use Kindex to teach children and students about history using primary sources from Kindex.
- Invite each student to transcribe a record and share what they learned
- Search for historical events in your family archive
- Study how historical events impacted your family
8. Facilitate record access and searchability for your society
Start a private collaborative archive for your genealogy or historical society. Create collections to share with your members, start a crowdsourced transcription project, and add the Kindex CSV data download all the transcriptions and metadata to your society’s database. You can even provide Kindex archives for families that donate their records to your society. Need help getting a collection of records transcribed? Create a public Kindex archive and invite others to help you index the records.
9. Create an archive for “lost” or orphaned photos.
Create a public Kindex archive for your “lost”, unidentified, or orphaned photos. Add the metadata you know, and invite others to search, transcribe, and share your records. (See found.kindex.org)
10. Start a “record rescue” for your family organization
Tired of guessing where all the family records went? Conduct a “record rescue” for your family organization to gather, scan, and archive family records. Host a “record reunion”, scanning party, or family transcribe-a-thon. Collaborate with cousins around the world in making your family’s records accessible and searchable to all your family.
What can you use Kindex for? Tell us your ideas!