The 1940 US Census will be released to the public in four days, at 9am Eastern Time on April 2nd.

The National Archives (NARA) has an interesting video about preparing the census for its digital release. This will be the first census to be released digitally.

Connie Potter recently spoke at the NY Public Library about the census. She is featured in previous video. The Legal Genealogist, Judy G. Russell, provides us some interesting lessons from that presentation.

And don’t forget about the indexing collaboration between FamilySearch, Archives.com, and findmypast. The index created by these sites, and the thousands of genealogists volunteering, will remain free forever. From their 1940 Census site, you can learn more about the census and download the indexing software. Don’t forget to check out the blog while you’re there to learn all kinds of other things about the census and the decade.

If you weren’t already excited about the release of the 1940 US Census, hopefully you will be once you see what’s coming. We all have a lot of people to look for. The sooner the index is finished, the sooner we can all find them without searching for addresses. Please help with the indexing!

You can download the indexing software and get yourself set up and ready to go. To read about Banai’s personal experience with setting up the indexing software, you can visit her blog. She shared this post at our last meeting; it includes some screenshots.

The first screen will allow you either to log in or to register if you don’t have a FamilySearch account. After logging in, it will ask you to choose a country, LDS stake, or group. Utah Jewish Genealogical Society is now listed as a participating society, so please sign up with us to represent your society. If you’re already using the software, you can set or change your group from the top menus: Tools > Options > Edit My Preferences.

We hope you’ll help to index the 1940 US Census.