Illinois State Genealogical Society Blog

The National Archives' 1950 Census page went live this week! The census search function will not be available until April 1st, but NARA has provided a ton of fantastic information that will be invaluable to all family historians eagerly awaiting the 1950 census release! Check out these highlights: NARA confirmed that they are using Amazon Web Services (AWS) as the host for the digitized records- and you will be able to do a bulk download of the full census. AWS is using optical character recognition (OCR) technology to digitally index the records. There will be a search function available that allows you to search by name and location. For the P8 Indian Reservation schedules, you will be able to search by Reservation. NARA is seeking volunteers to help submit name updates, as the OCR indexing will not be 100% accurate. A transcription tool will be made available on the census website- more info to come. Make sure to check out the resources available on the 1950 Census page- includ

Don't miss the January/February 2022 ISGS Newsletter! This issue features this very Blog! - plus the latest news for the 2022 Associate Forums (shout-out to all of our Member Societies!), the newest educational offerings for ISGS members, Associate member news, and the latest genealogy events! You can read the past several issues of the ISGS Newsletter on our website. © 2022, copyright Illinois State Genealogical Society

Good news- Illinois Secretary of State Facilities (including the Illinois State Archives) are set to re-open on January 24th. ISGS will resume processing death certificate orders this week, so please send in your requests and our Office Manager Vauna Stahl will get them taken care of ASAP!  CLICK HERE for more information on the ISGS discount Death Certificate Lookup service! Many Illinois family historians know about the searchable online databases available at ILSOS.gov. But make sure to also check out the Illinois State Archives publications collection!   The Archives' publications page offers many digitized booklets, brochures and forms to help researchers, especially the Research Series Pamphlets which cover different record sets such as African-American records and Federal Census Records.  The Research Series also includes an overview of the ISGS Prairie Pioneer Certificates and an introduction to the ISGS Microfilm Collection . This is a fantastic but often-overlooked res

The Illinois State Genealogical Society is seeking an editor for The Quarterly . The ISGS Quarterly has been a Society member benefit for over 50 years and is published 4 times a year. The Quarterly is a 64-page magazine with 4 color cover pages, and features a range of genealogical-related material that would be of interest to Society members with a focus on Illinois. The Quarterly Editor is responsible for determining the content for each issue of the Quarterly. This includes soliciting submissions, reviewing submissions, working with writers to create acceptable articles, selecting photos or images to include with articles, review citations, and work with regular contributors.  The Editor coordinates copy editing, layout, and indexing and sends the final, print-ready issue to the printer.  This is a stipend position. For more information, or if you know someone who would be a good fit as the ISGS Quarterly  Editor, please contact Vicki Mattson, ISGS President, at isgspresident@ilge

You don't want to miss CAGGNI's January Meeting! The legendary Steve Morse will be presenting "Getting Ready for the 1950 Census: Searching with and without a Name Index!" When the 1950 census will be released in April 2022, it will not have a name index. So finding people in the census will involve searching by location instead. Even when a name index becomes available, there will still be many reasons for doing locational searches. The census is organized by Enumeration Districts (EDs), so the location needs to be converted to an ED before the census can be accessed. The One-Step website contains numerous tools for obtaining EDs. This talk will present the various tools and show circumstances in which each can be used. CLICK HERE for more info and to register! © 2021, copyright Illinois State Genealogical Society