Volunteers Help Digitize Vital Records

Wish your state would put vital records on the Web, as the states such as Arizona and Minnesota have? You may be able to help the cause. The offices that maintain birth, marriage and death certificates don’t go it alone — they usually get outside assistance from other agencies or volunteer groups to complete indexing and digitization projects. For example:

• The Minnesota Historical Society designed and hosts the state’s online death-certificate index.

• Ohio’s death-certificate index grew out of a grant-funded project directed by the State Library of Ohio <winslo.state.oh.us>.

• By indexing Arizona’s vital records, the Mesa Regional Family History Center <www.mesarfhc.org> played a huge role in creating its state’s stellar birth- and death-records Web site.

• Local genealogical societies transcribed death records for Michigan’s site.

• More than 400 volunteers spent 17,500 hours transcribing birth and death records for Missouri’s site.