David joined a team at the Kane County, Utah, jail that he found surprisingly comforting — the family history indexing team. “Indexing brought the inmates together in teamwork — like a sporting event — and it was really good to see in a setting like this,” the prisoner explained. “Indexing allows us to have a positive interaction with one another.”
The process of indexing uses FamilySearch software to view images of old records and requires volunteers to enter a variety of records — birth, marriage, death, census, ship logs and other sources — into the system. The data is then compiled by FamilySearch (an organization of The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints) into a searchable index, matched with corresponding images, published on FamilySearch.org and is then available for public use.