Esperanza:

Thank you so much for your interest in the project. I think that if you go to familysearchindexing.org and download the software and try doing a page or two of the Aguascalientes census you will get a pretty good idea of what we will be doing, except that we will be doing it with colonial era censuses for the most part.

Here are the answers to your questions.

1) Where would we get the census and notary records that are being asked for us to index?
>> The new indexing software developed by the Family Hostory Center which is now being used on familysearchindexing.org uses digital scans of films that are downloaded one image at a time via the internet by the software. The software then links the indexed data to the corresponding image so someone can click on a name and see the original filmed image online!

a) Would these records be provided to us?
>> Yes, once we finalize the films that will be involved in our project, they will be prioritized for digitalization so that the images can be downloaded online by the indexers and arbitrators.

2) There is a present sentiment of not duplicating existing church records of marriages or baptisms, however some of these records do no exist for certain time frames.
a) Personally, I would be interested in helping with this data, even if
augmented through census data. More specifically, records missing for
Tlaltenango, Zacatecas. Would these records/films be made available for us to help with the indexing?
>> Lynn and Ruth feel that since there are already efforts to link existing IGI and VRI indexes to their corresponding film images, that they would have a hard time getting resources to have already indexed films re-indexed using the new system. That being said, there are obviously baptism and marriage records that are not indexed but they do not think they would be able to get prioritized resources for doing such records at this time. That being said, I think if we are successful, they will have a good story to tell as far as getting those other records done.

3) There are 26 films, will each of us be responsible for one, or will
there will be several of us working on them to double check against our data input?
>> The way it works, an indexer "checks out" and image. Each image is only checked out to two people (since all data is entered twice for quality control) and if someone does not finish their image within a couple of weeks, it is returned to be checked out by someone else. Thus a given film can be indexed by hundreds of people at the same time. That is the wonder of the system! We just have to recruit hundreds of people to help and each person doing just a few images will get the film completed in no time.

PS, Which unindexed Tlaltenango marriage/baptism records are you interested in?