Lindon, UT – October 29, 2009 – Today Footnote.com announced it will digitize and create a searchable database for all publicly available U.S. Federal Censuses ranging from the first U.S. Census taken in 1790 to the most current public census from 1930.
Through its partnership with The National Archives, Footnote.com will add more than 9.5 million images featuring over a half a billion names to its extensive online record collection.
“The census is the most heavily used body of records from the National Archives,” explains Cynthia Fox, Deputy Director at the National Archives. “In addition to names and ages, they are used to obtain dates for naturalizations and the year of immigration. This information can then be used to locate additional records.”
With over 60 million historical records already online, Footnote.com will use the U.S. Census records to tie content together, creating a pathway to discover additional records that previously have been difficult to find.
“We see the census as a highway leading back to the 18th century,” explains Russ Wilding, CEO of Footnote.com. “This Census Highway provides off-ramps leading to additional records on the site such as naturalization records, historical newspapers, military records and more. Going forward, Footnote.com will continue to add valuable and unique collections that will enhance the census collection.”
To date, Footnote.com has already completed census collections from two key decades: 1930 and 1860. As more census decades are added to the site, visitors to Footnote.com can view the status for each decade and sign up for an email notification when more records are added to the site for a particular year.
View the Census Progress Page on Footnote.com.
In addition to making these records more accessible, Footnote.com is advancing the way people use the census by creating an interactive experience. Footnote Members can enrich the census records by adding their own contributions. For any person found in the census, users can:
- Add comments and insights about that person
- Upload and attach scanned photos or documents related to that person
- Generate a Footnote Page for any individual that features stories, a photo gallery, timeline and map
- Identify relatives found in the census by clicking the I’m Related button
“The most popular feature of our Interactive Census is the I’m Related button,” states Roger Bell, Senior Vice President of Product Development at Footnote.com. “This provides an easy way for people to show relations and actually use the census records to make connections with others that may be related to the same person.”
“We will continue to move aggressively to add records to the site, specifically those that are requested by our members and others that are not otherwise available on the Internet,” said Wilding.
Visit http://www.footnote.com/census/
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