We all know that the Mormon church is famous for genealogy and the indexing process to maintain such informative and detailed records. Their new approach to indexing is interesting, to say the least. This interesting news came from the Standard-Examiner in Ogden, Utah in their article, “Inmates stay busy at Davis County Jail with Mormon name indexing.”
The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints (LDS) is now offering a family history indexing course at the Davies County Jail in addition to its typical ministering work there. Instructors ask inmates to sift through records up to hundreds of years old and determine names as part of the religion’s genealogy work.
The church proposed the unique program to the Utah Sheriff’s Association in 2012 and donated laptops and other equipment. After required security precautions were taken to prevent access to the broad Internet, the classes started in 2013. Over 2,250 names were cataloged by Davis County inmates in 2013, and almost 175,000 were completed throughout the state. The LDS Church said it expects that figure to reach about 2 million statewide in 2014.
Melody K. Smith
Sponsored by Access Innovations, the world leader in taxonomies, metadata, and semantic enrichment to make your content findable.
