Project planned to make microfilm in LDS vaults available on the Internet

The LDS Church has 2 million-plus rolls of microfilm with genealogical data in secured vaults positioned high inside the granite walls of Little Cottonwood Canyon. In the past, if you have wanted to look at some of those records, you have had to request them and wait a few days for them to show up at the Family History Library.

The Church has recently begun a huge effort to compile searchable indexes to that data and will eventually make it available for free through the Internet. This is similar to what the LDS Church has already done with the 1880 U.S. Census available at FamilySearch. According to a recent article in the Deseret News by Carrie A. Moore, just indexing the 1880 Census was a 12-year project with tens of thousands of volunteers. Luckily with some new software available, the Church will be able to create indexes much quicker, but will still need many volunteers to help.

"How much time will it take to digitize all the films in the vault?
'Let's put it this way, it will depend on how much volunteer help we get,' Nauta said. 'I think we can digitize the films to be indexed to stay up with demand, but much will depend on how many volunteers we can generate worldwide to index their records of interest. If, in a couple of years, we could get a million indexers worldwide, we could put a big dent' in the massive undertaking."

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