Ancestry.com formally launched the World Archives Project at the kickoff of the Federation of Genealogical Societies annual conference this morning. If you haven't yet heard of it, the World Archives Project is a global volunteer indexing initiative designed to enlist genealogists and family history enthusiasts to help create indexes from images of original historical records. For those of you familiar with FamilySearch Indexing, this is a similar type of indexing project. And before you get bent out of shape about a commercial organization enlisting volunteer labor, the indexes will be and remain free to the public on Ancestry.com. Active contributors (currently this means participants who help index 900+ records per quarter) will also receive free access to the original images, and those who already subscribe to Ancestry.com will be eligible for a discount on their subscription renewal - 10% off the annual U.S. Deluxe membership and 15% off an annual World Deluxe membership. It's unclear if you have to index 900+ records in each quarter preceding your renewal, or if you only have to index 900+ records sometime in the year prior to your renewal. Active contributors will also be able to vote on which records the project indexes next.

Along with the official launch of the World Archives Project, which has been in private beta for several months indexing Wisconsin Mortality Schedules and Nebraska State Censuses, the Federation of Genealogical Societies (FGS) announced that they are the first organization to partner with Ancestry.com during this beta phase, offering a way for the members of the 500+ genealogical societies that they represent to become involved in digitizing and preserving important historical records from their local communities. Current available projects for volunteer indexing include Southern California naturalization indexes and the Alabama state census.

If you have any questions about the World Archives Project and the collaboration between Ancestry.com and FGS, I'll be meeting with Tim Sullivan, CEO of Ancestry.com early this afternoon. Please feel free to post your question in the comments below and I'll do my best to get an answer for you!

I don't get to genealogy conferences nearly as often as I would like, but thanks to my husband who juggled his schedule so he could work from home this week and take care of getting our three children everywhere they need to be, I'm sitting in the Pittsburgh airport right now waiting for my flight to Philadelphia and this week's annual conference of the Federation of Genealogical Societies. A genealogy conference is a wonderful learning experience, as well as a chance to network with your fellow genealogists and make new friends. I'm planning to take full advantage of the many lectures and presentations, as well as attend several luncheons. I'll probably also be making good use of the free laptop lounge in the conference hall to check my email (work still needs to get done!) thanks to the generosity of Dick Eastman. My biggest goal for this year, however, is to try and break out of my shyness and actually meet and talk to my fellow genealogists. If you see me there, be sure to say hi! I especially hope to meet some of my fellow genealogy bloggers.

I know it's not always easy or financially possible for people to make it to the large national conferences. But that doesn't mean you still can't enjoy the many benefits a genealogy conference can offer. Check with your local society or library, or browse my online genealogy events calendar to find a lecture, workshop or conference in your neck of the woods!

A team of geographers from University College in London have used data from electoral rolls and telephone directories to map the distribution of 10.8 million surnames around the world. The information collected in this study, which covers a billion people in 26 countries, is available on the Web site Public Profiler: World Names, allowing genealogists and others with an interest to view where different names have originated and how families have scattered across the globe through migration. It's basically a takeoff on the popular National Trust Names Web site which displayed the concentration of surnames across the UK.

Professor Paul Longley, who launched the site at the Royal Geographical Society's conference in London, said: "This websites broadens the previous one and looks at the distribution of names in 26 countries.

"A name doesn't just tell you who you are – but where you are, where you came from and where your family has gone."

Since I'm being accused of partisan politics, I thought I would lay out the questions and issues surrounding John McCain's birth on a U.S. naval base in the Panama Canal Zone and the role that plays in his status as a "natural born" citizen. My original blog post about Barack Obama wasn't meant to be political - my interest is purely in the family history of the candidates and the questions surrounding their status as citizens of the United States. America is home to so many immigrants from all over the world, that almost every family tree has been impacted in some way by the immigration, naturalization and citizenship laws in effect at various times through the country's history.

In John McCain's case, it doesn't really appear to be a question over whether he is or is not a U.S. citizen that is of concern. Instead it is a question of interpretation of the basic qualification layed out in the U.S. Constitution that a president must be a "natural-born citizen." In the case of John McCain, who was born in 1936, it was a retroactive 1937 law that conferred citizenship on children born in the Canal Zone after 1904 to American parents. Read more...