In keeping with our mission, TGS provides opportunities to our members to participate in a variety of projects, including researching, indexing, transcribing, and compiling data from local resources. Volunteers are encouraged to apply their existing skills to those projects where they feel they can be most useful; as well as expanding their skills on projects where they may not be as confident. Project leaders work with anyone wanting to grow and share their enthusiam for all things genealogical.
Digital Library Catalog Project
The society "maintains" a library collection of nearly 1200 titles. The materials range from privately-produced family histories to titles from internationally-recognized leaders in the field of genealogy. We have a vast and varied collection of magazines, newsletters and journals from other historical and genealogical societies from around the country, as well as from foreign countries.
Our collection is housed on the second floor of the Leroy Collins Leon County Public Library. Unfortunately, while the county library provides us with physical space to allow us the opportunity to make the collection available to the general public, as non-circulating reference material, they do not provide catalog service for our collection.
In June of 2015, the society initiated a project to create a digital catalog of our holdings. Volunteers are engaged in sorting and organizing the existing collection, culling outdated materials and removing excessive duplicates. Other volunteers are producing the digital catalog inside WorldCat.org, an internet-based, world-wide, online cataloging system. The catalog will be available to anyone on the internet interested in perusing the titles in our collection.
The plan is to have this project completed by November 2015. The Digital Catalog is already being posted to the TGS website and reflects the current status of the project.
"The Tallahassee Genealogist" Surname Index Projects
The Tallahassee "Genealogist" is the official journal of the society and is printed four times each year. Two projects have been undertaken by the membership in the past to produce a Surname Index to the journals. The indexes provide publication Volume and Page number information for every surname appearing in the journal. The first project addressed the publication from year One through year Six. The second project covered the journal beginning in year Seven and concluded with year Twenty.
The products of those projects can be viewed by clicking here.
In the Fall of 2015, a project will be initiated to produce an index to those surnames appearing in the journal from year Twenty-one to the present. By the use of modern software and publishing tools, this newest index will incorporate the information from the two previous projects, as well as provide the means to maintain a continuously updated index. This approach will, hopefully, negate the need for any future surname indexing projects!
Bible Records Project
A cooperative effort between the Tallahassee Genealogical Society and the Florida State Archives was first undertaken in 1987, which allowed members of the general public to have selected pages of their family bibles copied, to preserve the valuable information in those precious family heirlooms. Photocopies of the materials were provided to the contributing individuals, and to the society. A bible record transcription project was begun by the TGS in 1987 but never completed.
The opportunity for copying was repeated in 1996, and again in early 1997. With the permission of the donors, the TGS developed a project to transcribe the contributed contents of the bible pages, combine them with images of the title pages (if available), and produce a hard-copy publication of the materials. The project has been suspended since the Fall of 1997.
The dust is off the records now and the project is on track for completion this Fall. With changes in technology and a move away from printed materials, the new project outcome will consist of downloadable, searchable, PDF files of the materials. The finished product will be hosted on the TGS website, and will be accessible to the general public at no cost. A very limited number of hardcopies may be produced, to be located at the Florida State Archives and within the TGS library collection, housed at the Leroy Collins Leon County Public Library.
The target completion date for this project is 24 October 2015.
"The Tallahassee Genealogist" Article Index Project
This project was completed in July 2015.
The Article Index Project captured the Title, Subject, Author, Volume and Page Number for nearly every article in the entire collection of the society's journal. The project outcome is a fully-searchable PDF document that can be viewed, printed, or downloaded, for the users convenience.
Society members have unlimited, free access to the online archive of journals. Non-members will have the ability to purchase digital-download copies of the journal in early August 2015.
To view the Article Index PDF document, click here.