Volunteer Projects » Miscellaneous Projects

'Genealogists for Families' project

Genealogists worldwide, plus family and friends, are working as a team to help families and small businesses in low income areas. Our motto is, 'We care about families (past, present and future).'

African American Civil War Soldiers - Zooniverse

Transcribe the military records of African American soldiers in the American Civil War. (The Zooniverse is the world’s largest and most popular platform for people-powered research.)

Criminal Characters - Zooniverse

Tracking the life histories and criminal careers of Australian prisoners. (The Zooniverse is the world’s largest and most popular platform for people-powered research.)

FamilySearch Indexing

A volunteer project to extract data from digital images and make them available through FamilySearch.

How to Help Librarians and Archivists From Your Living Room

Slews of institutions are in the market for armchair archivists—volunteers who can generate knowledge by clicking through digitized resources, deciphering handwriting, tagging photos, and more.

Immigrant Ships Transcribers Guild

Volunteers have transcribed more than 5,000 passenger lists since 1998.

Macdonald Dictionary - Zooniverse

Help us to transcribe names and supporting information in the G.R. Macdonald Dictionary of Canterbury Biographies. (The Zooniverse is the world’s largest and most popular platform for people-powered research.)

Open Genealogy Data

US Census transcription project to release the census databases into the public domain. Includes free census search.

Random Acts of Genealogical Kindness Wiki

This wiki is an effort to reconstruct and revive the Random Acts of Genealogical Kindness site that was created by Bridgett Schneider and which became dormant with her death in the fall of 2011. Hopefully, the previous volunteers will find the site and supply contact information so that the wiki volunteer pages can be as robust as they once were.

Smithsonian Digital Volunteers: Transcription Center

Become a Smithsonian Digital Volunteer and help us make historical documents and biodiversity data more accessible. Since June of 2013, our community of "volunpeers" have collaboratively transcribed and reviewed over a million pages of field notes, diaries, ledgers, logbooks, currency proof sheets, photo albums, manuscripts, biodiversity specimen labels, and historic audio recordings.

The American Soldier - Zooniverse

Help transform this one-of-a-kind collection of reflections on war and military service by American soldiers who served during the Second World War. (The Zooniverse is the world’s largest and most popular platform for people-powered research.)

U.S. National Archives and Records Administration - Citizen Archivist Dashboard

Transcribe historical documents, contribute articles, upload your own images.

World Memory Project

The United States Holocaust Memorial Museum has gathered millions of historical documents containing details about survivors and victims of the Holocaust and Nazi persecution during World War II. In partnership with Ancestry.com the two organizations have created the World Memory Project to allow the public to help make the records from the Museum searchable by name online for free. Getting started is as simple as downloading a free software program and then typing details from a record image into a database that will then become searchable online.