by Cathy Gilmore | Mar 16, 2017 | Features, Resources, Software
Announcing the release the Kindex Collaborative Upgrade, the best way to bring family and friends together on a single, online archive. Upgrade to Collaborative and transform your archive into a destination where friends or family can help gather, index, and search—or simply enjoy reading family records.
Also released today is the option to create a Public archive when upgrading to a collaborative account. Enjoy the benefits of Crowdsourced Indexing, and jumpstart your indexing by allowing any Kindex user to transcribe and tag your records. Public archives also help others to discover and connect to your archive.
SIGN UP (more…)
by Cathy Gilmore | Feb 13, 2017 | Uncategorized
What started with a discovery of grandma’s old letters ended with a $25,000 prize for the People’s Choice winners at the 2017 RootsTech Innovators Showdown. For cousins Kimball Clark and Cathy Gilmore, the award represents a heartfelt validation that Kindex®—web software that enables families to archive and index their family records together—is needed by families everywhere.
“This Award is an honor,” Kimball said. “We’ve built something entirely new and innovative that solves a real problem almost every family has: ensuring their precious records can be preserved, shared, and found for generations.” Paul Brooks, CEO of Twile and winners of the same award in 2016, agrees. “In the end, People’s Choice is the award that counts,” he said. In a year that saw customer growth, new product offerings, and a partnership with FindMyPast, Twile has proven its staying power. Kindex expects to be no different.
As self-described record hoarders, Cathy and Kimball share an ambitious goal. “Our mission is to rescue the most at-risk, under-utilized resource in family history: the records in your own home,” said Cathy. Her interest in family history began when she discovered a box of letters written by her Grandma Dorothy Smith Clark. “I thought I knew my grandma,” she said, “but after reading her letters, I saw her in a new light and I wanted to share that with everyone.” That desire to share family records grew into what is now Kindex—indexing software that enables families to “search every word” of their family records. “Letters, journals, video and audio—these personal records have gone largely underutilized by historians and families. It’s time we change that,” said Kimball.
“This is a family business in every way,” Kimball continued. “The more we read our grandma’s records, the more we discovered she had the very same vision—to share family history with everyone. But she lived with limited technology, so we are carrying on her vision in a new way.” Many of Cathy and Kimball’s family members are already catching on. Using Kindex to transcribe and search their own family’s personal records has fostered family unity and provided an easy, inviting gateway to for their family to connect with their ancestors on a more personal level—by reading and searching records written in their own words.
After adding nearly 400 users at RootsTech, Kimball and Cathy are back at work overseeing the development of their collaborative archives and other upcoming features for their almost 800 users. They are also busy with the services arm of Kindex, giving families hands-on help organizing and digitizing their family records. Kindex’s “Record Rescue” service include digitization services and record-gathering events for families. “Gathering and digitizing records is a huge bottleneck for many families,” Cathy said. “These services help families take a huge step forward in getting their records digitized and on a collaborative family archive. On-site scanning events at family reunions are especially successful in unifying records that are scattered among various households.”
To learn more about how Kindex can help you rescue your family records, visit kindex.org and sign up for a free archive.
by Cathy Gilmore | Jan 28, 2017 | Uncategorized
For Kindex, RootsTech 2017 promises to be bigger and better than ever. Since our debut in RootsTech last year, we’ve worked hard to solve the challenges that come with owning records. As the first dedicated indexing web software accessible to anyone who wants to create an organized, searchable archive, Kindex offers a collaborative solution to gathering, transcribing, and sharing records. We’re excited to present these solutions at RootsTech—in our booths, in labs, and in the Innovator Showdown. Here’s where to find us.
Innovator Showdown
Competing in our second year in the Semifinals of the RootsTech Innovator Showdown, we are grateful and excited for the opportunity to pitch our indexing web software solution to judges and attendees as part of the RootsTech Innovator Summit.
A startup funded largely by the bootstrap efforts of founders Kimball Clark and Cathy Gilmore, Kindex is a unique and innovate solution in the family history tech market. A successful run in the showdown will enable Kindex to meet the growing demands of families, organizations, and societies who require a solution for at-risk, inaccessible, unsearchable archives.
Your continued support means so much to us as we navigate the challenges of building something altogether new in the family history market. We hope to see you at the Innovator Showdown and invite you to cheer us on!
Check out our Innovator Showdown entry on Devpost.
Innovation Alley
Innovation Alley is area of tightly-packed booths where industry innovators meet with a non-stop stream of attendees excited to experience the latest in family history tech. Last year it was one of our favorite areas in the Expo Hall. There is definitely a different buzz in the Alley, and we are excited to join other innovators there again this year.
Expo Hall
You’ll not want to miss visiting our Expo Hall booth for hands-on demos if our indexing software, conference-only specials, giveaways, and a special appearance from the “Archive Monster”. Tells what’s in your archive and you’ll have a chance to win a free Kindex Family Archive subscription. Look for us in booth #1433, right next to the Demo Theater and Show and Tell area.
Lab: How to Index & Search Your Own Records
Join Kindex co-founder Kimball Clark as he teaches an add-on lab, Beyond Digitization: How to Index & Search Your Own Records. Taught Wednesday at 4:30 p.m, and Thursday at 11:00 a.m.(251B – LAB), discover how to create a searchable archive of your own family or group records through collaborative gathering and indexing efforts.
Follow Us
We invite you to support us in the “Record Rescue” effort, both at RootsTech and beyond:
by Cathy Gilmore | Jan 8, 2017 | Features
Do you wish there was a better way to archive and search your family’s letters, journals, and photos? Are you still using a combination of spreadsheets, PDFs, and word processing tools to transcribe your family history records? For Archive Awareness Week, we are reprising our top ten reasons why we love Kindex.
- We’ve got SaaS. Kindex is web software containing tools to help you archive and index, and search your digital records. There is no software to install, just go to kindex.org and create an account.
- We ❤ hoarders. We all know the feeling. Someone in your family wants to borrow the priceless family record you’ve kept in your home for years? Hard pass. Rather than wait until they pry it from your cold, dead hands, why not digitize those records and put them on Kindex? You can make your archive public or private, and invite others to view and index. So, whether your a record-keeper, a record-hoarder, or you’re a downright record-hider, Kindex helps you share your precious family records without the risk of your great-nephew spilling his Starbucks on your grandfather’s journal. And, you can learn what’s been hiding in Aunt Sue’s closet all these years (well, besides those bell-bottoms).
- We have layers. With Kindex you can add layers of searchable data to your records. We move beyond titles and descriptions to include valuable data points such as record provenance, transcription, keywords, date, place, and addtional tags.
- Share the love. Are you the family historian that gets stuck with all the work? Not anymore. Create a Kindex Family archive and share your records (and the indexing work) with anyone. Get your family and friends involved, and they might learn why you’re so crazy about your ancestors. Or just why you’re crazy. Still, they may be inspired to add a few records of their own to share with you, so it’s a win-win.
- Thanks for the Memories. Kindex is integrated with FamilySearch, which means you can import the Memories you’ve added to FamilySearch into Kindex and make them searchable with our indexing tools. In the coming weeks we’ll also have the ability to share Kindex records back to FamilySearch. That means all the people you tagged with FamilySearch IDs in your record transcriptions? They’ll get shared with those people on FamilySearch.
- Be a rescuer. Having a well-preserved letter, journal, or diary of an ancestor is at the top of many people’s wish list. Kindex offers families the ability to grant this wish by helping gather, index, and share records that would otherwise be lost, damaged, or thrown away. Rescue your family records on Kindex—your descendants will thank you.
- Search your way. Tired of searching huge genealogy databases and getting too many (or not enough) results? With Kindex you can create personal or family archives containing just the records you want, so you get the search results you want.
- Like, settle down with the family history. We get it. You would rather research Alexander Hamilton, or bugs, or Roald Dahl? You can use Kindex to archive, index, and research any topic. Put your documents on Kindex, and start indexing. Just make sure you’re the record holder, or you have permission to upload and index that record.
- You’re special, but not special enough to have your own indexing software. Some archives are lucky — they have their own custom indexing software. But if you’re not the Smithsonian or National Archives, it doesn’t mean you’re stuck doing the old Spreadsheet/Microsoft Word/PDF tango. Are you an archivist, historian, researcher, or librarian who needs a custom solution for indexing a collection? Kindex Projects, due to be released in Spring 2017, will support records that require custom indexing fields, multiple download formats, and privacy options.
- Kids these days. It’s been said that kids nowadays don’t read—they search. By offering a searchable database of family records, Kindex provides a familiar and fun gateway for people to enter and learn quickly about their ancestor. Then, after they read an indexed record, they may be inspired to jump in and index one themselves. The feeling you get when you read and transcribe a record your ancestor kept is one we hope everyone feels—especially our kids.
by Cathy Gilmore | Dec 28, 2016 | RootsTech 2016
If you’ve followed Kindex for very long, you’ll know that we frequently post about our Grandma Dorothy Smith Clark. Today I want to share with you why her story is so important to us.
As a child, I asked Grandma Clark what she would like for her birthday. “Tell me a story,” she answered. This voice speaks to me still. As a young teenager she encouraged me to create and write. A visit with her hardly went by without her suggesting, “Write me a poem.” That encouragement speaks to me still. Today, when I read her letters and diaries, I see her notes in the margins revealing instructions for a personal history—a project she never completed before passing away. Those notes speak to me still.
A marked-up page from Dorothy’s life history.
When my cousin Kimball and I decided to launch Kindex, our aim was to create a solution for the enormous body of work our grandma left behind. While it was impossible for Dorothy to envision the type of indexing tool we are building today, I like to think she had a sense of what was to come. She had the gift of foresight, the ability to anticipate and address needs. In a sense, building Kindex will finish the work she started, while also helping us tell her story.
And what is her story? I’ll share just a part. While still a young mother, Dorothy completed her Book of Remembrance. A work of art in its own right, its pages reveal her deep sense of ancestral belonging, records of her parents’ and grandparents’ spiritual gifts, and a recognition of her own divine purpose and talents. As Dorothy developed her own spiritual gifts, her ability to discern the needs of others and act in faith became a catalyst for ministering to others, notwithstanding the fear and shyness she often felt. To the question posed to the Savior, “Who is my neighbor?” Dorothy could answer: the plumber, the piano tuner, the refugee, or the outcast—anyone in her path in need of help.
A watercolored page from the Dorothy Smith Clark Book of Remembrance
Dorothy’s 1964 poster sketch titled “We Believe in Sharing” affirmed the scope of her desires: to give all she had—her talents, testimony, labor, food, and possessions, bringing “more happiness, enrich[ing] the world, sharing all that has come to us as a church and as individual members.”
[1] Often overcome with social anxiety or limited by her heath, Dorothy preferred personal visits to projects, created art to share the gospel, and wrote hundreds of inspired letters that today stand as a witness to bear one another’s burdens. Without prejudice or judgment, her nurturing influence reached beyond her own nine children when she became a foster mother to two Navajo children and a personal advocate for many Southeast Asian refugees who affectionately called her “Mother Clark”.
Dorothy Clark with husband Ellsworth, foster son Cody Black, and Cody’s family.
While Dorothy’s art was never exhibited, her painting of Paul Wildhaber’s “The Armor of Righteousness” was the centerpiece of her home. Unlike others who traditionally depicted male religious figures, 20-year-old Dorothy changed the painting’s subject from hero to heroine, thus broadening the view of those who are “armed in righteousness”. From her childhood fairy gifts to the ministering of the needful and forgotten, her visionary example of what a woman can do endures through her depiction of this righteous and strong heroine.
Dorothy Smith in Paul Wildhaber’s studio.
Dorothy Smith’s completed “Armor of Righteousness”
Dorothy continued her talent of creating and sharing family histories well into the last years of her life. In 1980 she participated in the World Conference of Records in a booth of her own design.
Dorothy at the World Conference of Records in 1980
As I think about her life, I see a patterns emerging as her children, grandchildren, and beyond strive to finish what she started. Kindex is just a small part of a larger effort to emulate the kind of woman she was. Sometimes, when I feel overwhelmed at the pressures of launching a startup while still raising a young family, I look at the binders and boxes of her records and think, “Soon, we’ll know your story. Not long yet.”
Dorothy and Ellsworth in New Zealand, 1974
[i] Dorothy Smith, Sketches. “We Believe in Sharing”, 1964
