Cosenza Archives & Family Search

It feels like I haven't been around in forever - life just seems to be getting in the way of my being able to sit here and write.  I have two weeks to go to reach my goal of losing 20 pounds and it looks like I just might be short by a pound or two.  No matter - I'm still happy with my progress so far and have been busy exercising and enjoying the summer as much as possible this year.

The other thing I have been totally consumed by is helping a friend locate information about another friend's family.  Gwen is defintiely an expert in most areas of research since she and her husband are the Directors at the Family History Center I like going too but when she told me about her little project I couldn't resist jumping in and offering my help.  Together we've done quite well.  She ordered all the microfilms from the town we were interested and since the town is in Cosenza, I used the Cosenza Archives website to piece family group members together.  I email her what I think and she emails me back her thoughts and the actual records I would like to see.  Then once a week we meet and compare notes!

I also am in the process of redesigning the Calabria Exchange so that's taking a bit of time and effort.  I asked for anyone interested in helping out with the project to contact me and the response has been overwhelming.  I really hope this will expand the project more quickly and lighten some of the load on myself and Mary who is currently extracting the majority of the Ardore records I have been putting on line.  I'm not sure what I would have done without her this last year.  She's been absolutely amazing.

As for the Italian Surname Database - well thats a job in itself.  The format I currently use makes it so difficult to input all the surnames we get daily so I need to find another way to do this.  Sometimes I am at it for hours formatting and inputting the data, not to mention correcting spellings of Towns and doing look ups so it's as accurate as it can be. 

Time to cook and call it an early night.  The system at work has been down for two days and the workload is going to be killer.  I am going to try and get in there early tomorrow so I can get everything that needs to be done.