To celebrate and publicize Random Acts of Kindness Week, I'm republishing my series from 2008, with some editing to fit 2014.
One way that you can make a difference to the genealogical community is to volunteer to transcribe, abstract, or index genealogical data for a society or other group. With the advent of the Internet, this no longer means that you always have to go onsite to do your act of kindness! I know of several members of the Eastern Washington Genealogical Society, as well as my sister-in-law (not an EWGS member), who have volunteered to index data for the Washington State Digital Archives. In my sister-in-law's case, she had copies of census records mailed to her, which she then indexed, never having to leave home to volunteer her time. FamilySearch Indexing is another project that you can work on from home, which I have done on occasion. Renee and Lori are a couple of my geneablogging friends that have been volunteering for this and blogging about their experiences. Cyndi's List also has a page of Volunteer Projects where you can locate an assignment on which to work.
Can you read a foreign language or old-style handwriting? Your translating skills are needed! Cyndi's List has a list of volunteer websites where you could sign up to help in this area; or volunteer to help with handwriting and script on any of these sites.
Working on these types of projects is fun, satisfying, and often can be done in small amounts of time. I encourage you to try one out one of the above!
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