At the Israel Genealogy Research Association (IGRA) we are working very hard to create useful databases to help people with their genealogy research. We have already indexed over three million records and we keep adding many more every month.
Since 2017, IGRA is working with a tool called Crowd Sourced Indexing (CSI) which is designed to make the process easier, more secure, and more automated. You can simply sign up on the site, and join an IGRA indexing project in English, Hebrew or French, where they are shown the relevant images and can index them all online. This not only speeds up the work in creating databases, but makes it easier for volunteers to join our work and participate. The more volunteers we have, the faster the work goes.
When you register, select IGRA as your Group so you can receive notifications of new indexing projects. From the home page, you can view a list of the projects available. You can search by category, geographical location or language to find one that interests you. When you find a project you want to help index, click on the project, read the general and project’s specific instructions carefully and register. Once your registration has been approved you can start indexing.
You will immediately be given the next image available. You can move, pan and zoom the image with the buttons provided. You can report any problem on the image, skip it if there is nothing to index or is too hard for you to do.
If all is ok, just type the data into the fields on the bottom half of the page. The transcription for each page has to be completed within 23 hours. When you’re finished, submit the transcriptions, and you’re done. You can continue to another page or come back another time to do more. You don’t have to contact anyone, or wait for someone to send you a batch of images. Everything is online and waiting.
IGRA already completed the following databases:
- 1949 Voters Knesset (Hebrew)
- 1944 Voters Knesset Israel (Hebrew)
- Students 1917-1964 Alliance Morocco (French)
- Notrim – Jewish Police Force British Mandate (English)
- 1950 Voters Lists for Jerusalem & Haifa Municipal Elections (Hebrew)
