by Cathy Gilmore | Jan 21, 2017 | Features, Resources
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!
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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 | Jan 6, 2016 | Features, RootsTech 2016, Software
Kindex™ brings family records out of obscurity through indexing—creating a searchable, shareable archive that connects records to families and researchers. Here’s how it works:
Gather
Organize your family records by person, record type, and date. After you scan and digitize your records, add them to your Kindex.org Archive.
• Unite family records (multiple file types)
• Establish record provenance
• Unlimited space
Index
Transcribe your records and invite others to help. Add tags for people, places, events, and subjects. Archive Administrators verify all indexing (transcription and tagging).
• Invite family and community to index
• Build your searchable archive
• Credit those who transcribe and tag
Share
As Archives grow, search, read and share new family stories and records. Connect Family Archives together, and print complete, sourced archival books.
• Add tagged records to FamilySearch Memories
• Share memories on social media
• Print archive—in part or whole—to an easy-to-read PDF
• Read transcribed records within the browser
• Download original records
See our debut at RootsTech in Salt Lake City, February 3–6, 2016!
For further information on our software, products, and services, please contact us.
