A Day in the Life

A Day in the Life

by | Feb 27, 2018 | Stories from the Archive

Despite all the busyness of preparing for RootsTech, this morning I had a few quiet moments this morning thinking of our Grandma Dorothy Smith Clark. I wondered, what was she doing this week, so many years ago? I searched “Feb 27” on her Kindex archive, and found these diary pages from 1928:

Sunday Feb 26th

Stay home from S S with Virgil who has a bad cold. Go to church with Lucille & to Mutual. In our J class we discuss getting or “J” pin. Discuss contest numbers for M.I.A. Day & began plan for  Progressive Supper.

Monday Night Feb 27 Lucille P. and I went down to Galt Hospital to see Anna Nielson who had her appendix out last Friday. She was feeling pretty good. We took her some flowers in behalf of our Junior class.

Wed. Feb 29th – Leap year

We washed & in P.M. I went to bed as I had a little sore throat.

Thurs. Mar 1st Spring weather

March 2nd

Friday. I’m up & better. Sr. Wallburger sends us some cakes & tarts.

Nothing much: some church activities, a sore throat, a visit to a friend, and a comment on the weather. And yet, it is so much, because with every found page the knowledge of who she was becomes more complete. Getting face-to-face with her history is one the greatest gifts I can think of.

What will you discover when you index your family records? Try it out free on Kindex.org.

 

Transforming Family History Through Metadata & Transcription

Transforming Family History Through Metadata & Transcription

by | Nov 3, 2017 | Features, Software

If a family record can’t be discovered, searched, or shared, what value is it? How do we rescue our family records and transform them into a family archive that reaches beyond the walls of our own home and into the hearts of countless others?

Engaging our families through searchable archives is our primary mission at Kindex. Check out our five essential steps that add value to records and bring families one step closer to getting face-to-face with their own history.

infographic1 copy

1. Gather your records for scanning. Take an inventory of what you have, start with a small project (think shoebox-sized), and get scanning.

kinfograph-1.jpg

2. Add your digitized records to an online database. Google and Dropbox are great, but consider tools like Kindex that offer collaborative and indexing tools. After all, what good are digitized records if no one can access or search them? 

kinfograph-2.jpg

3. Add metadata to your records. In Kindex, this can be done on-the-fly when uploading records in batch mode, making it quick and easy to get records searchable.

infographic1 copy

4. Transcribe your records. While you can do this in a word processing program, adding transcriptions in Kindex is easy and keeps the indexed data attached to the original record.

infographic1 copy

5. Add tags for names, dates, and places. (Note: our tagging tool is temporarily offline while we make some improvements.)

kinfograph-5.jpg

Are you ready to rescue your history?

Get started on Kindex today to take advantage of unlimited records and collaborative tools that will get your records out of the closet and into the hearts of your family everywhere. 

SIGN UP OR LOG IN

20170921_112259 (1).jpg

 

Treasure Hunting at Home: a Visit to the Alamo

Treasure Hunting at Home: a Visit to the Alamo

by | Jul 14, 2017 | News

A few days ago, we visited The Alamo. No, not that one. The historic home of Ezra T. and Mary Stevenson Clark in Farmington, Utah, with its architectural stylings reflective of the Alamo, was the childhood home of Kindex founder Kimball Clark. On a mission to rescue records for a treasure hunt for the upcoming MyFamily History Youth Camp at BYU, we thought of no better place to start than in our own backyard.
alamo-0

Welcome to the Alamo.

I had a few minutes waiting for Kimball to arrive, so I poked around outside, walking deep into the expansive property. Situated on historic “Clark Lane” in Farmington, Utah, the property stretches north reaching the Farmington Creek Trail and Lagoon Park. So close is Lagoon that I could hear clack of amusement rides and the screams of thrill-seekers just a stone’s throw away.
alamo-6

Kimball’s father Charles Clark collected, among other things, wagon wheels.

alamo-9

And other kinds of wheels.

alamo-8

The random patterns of native field stones.

alamo-5

A marker for the old telephone system cables. It has not been disturbed.

alamo-4

At last, Kimball is here! Now, where’s that key.

Once inside, we had a great time exploring the home. I remember coming to this home once in a while to visit Charles and Sally’s family, but it had been at least 20 years. Wandering from room to room in the heavy July heat, we discovered some great things. Buried between craft boxes, tools, and boxes of old bills were family genealogies, old photos, letters, and a few other surprises.
alamo-1

A few items from a dusty old suitcase.

This 161-year old home is thick with memory. Treasure hunting aside, I loved looking around the various rooms and hearing Kimball’s memories of growing up here. With eight brothers and one sister, Kimball has no shortage of stories from this house.
alamo-3

A view in the kitchen.

alamo-14

A well-worn banister post cap.

Someday soon, Kimball will share some memories of him growing up in that historic pioneer home. That’s his story to tell. In the mean time, we’ll keep hunting for treasures and putting them on Kindex, one dusty suitcase at a time.

Announcing new batch & collections features for your Kindex archive

Announcing new batch & collections features for your Kindex archive

by | Apr 14, 2017 | Features, Resources, Software

Kindex is excited to announce the release of two major software updates that enable Kindex users to customize and grow their archives in powerful new ways.

1. Add & Organize Records into Collections

Archive owners can now create Collections within their archives to organize their records. With collections, you can organize your records any way you wish. For example, your collections can be named as family names, record types, dates, or subjects.

gathercallouts-n

2. Add Multiple Records & Assign Record Info (Metadata) to a Batch

You may now add multiple records to your archive quickly and easily, with the added benefit of designating Record Info (metadata) to a batch of records. This feature allows users to apply common metadata to an entire batch of records, instead of applying metadata individually.  Metadata may include Record Info such as descriptions, provenance, dates, places, and keywords. Metadata can also be added and edited in batch form from  your archive’s Gather page.

Step 1: To add multiple records, click “Add Records”, and select “Upload from my computer”.

add-records.png

addrecords

Step 2: Select your records. If you don’t know how to select multiple files at once from your computer, hover atop the link “How to Batch Upload”.

addrecords-2

Step 3: Assign your batch of records to a collection, or add a new collection for them to be placed, and review your upload progress. At this point, you may opt to add Record Info (metadata) as a batch now, or individually later.

addrecords-3

Step 4: Add Record Info to your records.

addrecords-4

What’s Next?

The following enhancements are currently in development and will be released soon:

  • Manually order your Collections
  • Nest a Collection within a Collection

Upgrade Now

If you don’t already have an Unlimited + Collaborative Kindex Archive, now is the time to upgrade and take advantage of these amazing tools. Please contact us with an questions you may have, and happy batching!

SIGN UP OR LOG IN

 

Who Deserves an Archive?

Who Deserves an Archive?

by | Apr 6, 2017 | Features, Resources, Software

 

Among the many documents our Grandma Dorothy Clark left behind was a handwritten list of her attempts to be published. She sent articles to church magazines or the Reader’s Digest, but not once were her stories published. As an amateur artist, she never had an exhibit of her art beyond the walls of her own home except the occasional entry at the State Fair. And her letters—including hundreds of handwritten letters to family & friends—sat folded up in boxes for years.

dorothypainting

Dorothy Smith in Paul Wildhaber’s art studio in Salt Lake City, Utah, 1932

Her amazing life never made headlines, and was never published. Her records are not found in any special collection, or any other archive devoted to preserving government, academic, or historical records. Her records live on our shelves and closets. But to us she was a leader worth following, and a woman worth remembering. She deserves an archive.

Your Records At Risk

What about your records? Family records represent one of the most at-risk sources of our history. One only has to walk through flea markets and second-hand stores to see the plethora of family records that are discarded. Records that are kept are often scattered among various families, eventually getting lost, damaged, or forgotten.

How will you ensure this doesn’t happen to your records? Do your photos, journals, diaries, letters, and other precious family records deserve an archive? Another way of asking that question is, “Do you deserve to be remembered?”. The answer is, of course “Yes. A thousand times yes.”

giphy

Everyone deserves an archive—not just the rich, famous, or important. We all deserve to be remembered.

Searchable Archives for Everyone

When we built Kindex, our goal was to bring amazing archival tools to everyday families. Putting family records on Kindex enables anyone to create a digital archive and access professional tools that make their records more accessible and relevant than ever. Families who manage their own archives on their custom Kindex subdomain can:

  • Collaborate with unlimited people to gather records from multiple sources
  • Add unlimited records
  • Import and add metadata in batch mode (release April 10 2017)
  • Utilize crowdsourced indexing tools
  • Choose public or private archive access
  • Enjoy full text searchability
  • Access & download source records and indexed data

Cool. How do I start?

Found-photo-14.32.24