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"just has to scan and OCR" Yeah, just OCR badly hand-written text. That's a hard problem! I've run across matches in the census data that I would consider il

by smackfu 14y ago

"just has to scan and OCR" Yeah, just OCR badly hand-written text. That's a hard problem! I've run across matches in the census data that I would consider illegible, but that somehow got matched with the right name.

BrainScraps 14y ago
There are thousands of volunteers doing this "mechanical Turk"-like work at a pretty impressive pace. http://www.lds.org/church/news/volunteers-make-record-progress-indexing-1940-us-census http://www.lds.org/church/news/volunteers-make-record-progre... Also, the tools created to index these records are created mainly by Mormon developers who donate their time. Interesting story about Mobile apps for indexing: http://tech.lds.org/blog/455-new-familysearch-indexing-app-now-available http://tech.lds.org/blog/455-new-familysearch-indexing-app-n... Disclaimer: I'm a big fan and member of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-Day Saints (Mormon)
- JoblessWonder 14y ago
  Is the data available to outside organizations or is it kept internally with the church?
  - UrLicht 14y ago
    Yes, see https://familysearch.org https://familysearch.org
  - smackfu 14y ago
    Yeah, they have no reason to keep it secret. They are gathering it for their own odd purpose but that doesn't preclude sharing it.
- UrLicht 14y ago
  Mormon developers do not donate their time. https://www.lds.org/church/employment?lang=eng https://www.lds.org/church/employment?lang=eng (Must be LDS to browse and apply for jobs, but you can see the heading on the linked page indicating Information Technology jobs are available).
  - resplin 14y ago
    The LDS Church does employ many developers, but they also benefit from a lot of volunteer contributions. They have a neat program for organizing volunteer efforts: https://vineyard.lds.org/ https://vineyard.lds.org/
  - BrainScraps 14y ago
    See also: http://tech.lds.org/contribute http://tech.lds.org/contribute
enraged_camel 14y ago
Minor nitpick: for machine-reading hand-written text, the process is actually called ICR - Intelligent Character Recognition.

by smackfu 14y ago

BrainScraps 14y ago

There are thousands of volunteers doing this "mechanical Turk"-like work at a pretty impressive pace. http://www.lds.org/church/news/volunteers-make-record-progress-indexing-1940-us-census http://www.lds.org/church/news/volunteers-make-record-progre... Also, the tools created to index these records are created mainly by Mormon developers who donate their time. Interesting story about Mobile apps for indexing: http://tech.lds.org/blog/455-new-familysearch-indexing-app-now-available http://tech.lds.org/blog/455-new-familysearch-indexing-app-n... Disclaimer: I'm a big fan and member of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-Day Saints (Mormon)

JoblessWonder 14y ago
Is the data available to outside organizations or is it kept internally with the church?
- UrLicht 14y ago
  Yes, see https://familysearch.org https://familysearch.org
- smackfu 14y ago
  Yeah, they have no reason to keep it secret. They are gathering it for their own odd purpose but that doesn't preclude sharing it.
UrLicht 14y ago
Mormon developers do not donate their time. https://www.lds.org/church/employment?lang=eng https://www.lds.org/church/employment?lang=eng (Must be LDS to browse and apply for jobs, but you can see the heading on the linked page indicating Information Technology jobs are available).
- resplin 14y ago
  The LDS Church does employ many developers, but they also benefit from a lot of volunteer contributions. They have a neat program for organizing volunteer efforts: https://vineyard.lds.org/ https://vineyard.lds.org/
- BrainScraps 14y ago
  See also: http://tech.lds.org/contribute http://tech.lds.org/contribute

enraged_camel 14y ago

Minor nitpick: for machine-reading hand-written text, the process is actually called ICR - Intelligent Character Recognition.