Indexing the 1950 U.S. Census

Do you want to help index the 1950 U.S. Census? Now you can through the National Archives and Family Search websites. 

 

To develop the initial name index, the National Archives is “using Amazon Web Services’ artificial intelligence / optical character recognition (AI/OCR) Textract tool to extract the handwritten names from the digitized 1950 Census population schedules.” This technology will “not be 100-percent accurate” according to the National Archives. 

You can "Use the built-in transcription feature to correct and add names to the site's name index. Your contributions can help make the 1950 Census population schedules more discoverable for everyone."

Official 1950 Census Website https://1950census.archives.gov/ 

 

Family Search allows you to "Become part of this once-in-a-decade community project! You can help by reviewing a few of our computer generated entries and fixing any errors that you see."

"Volunteers will review and improve an automated index created by Ancestry using handwriting recognition technology to ensure that it is complete and accurate."  

1950 U.S. Census Community Project https://www.familysearch.org/getinvolved/1950

 

Read about the latest project updates and get answers to FAQs.

Brian Brown, Librarian, Local History & Genealogy