USERS
OF FDEX
Because
the FDEX Compiler is oriented to indexing full personal names in
documents related to genealogy, it is used extensively for
publications of the Alabama Genealogical Society (AGS) of which I am a member.
The
Towns
& Counties Of Alabama
index (on the web at www.algensoc.org/Alabama-indexing)
In
the spring of 2003, members of AGS and other volunteers began a
project to index a three-volume set of books shelved at the
Birmingham Public Library. The 1198 pages contain a wealth of
information about people, places, and events of interest to
historians and genealogists. In May of 2005, a consolidated index of
all three volumes was completed, printed, bound and donated to the
library. The index formatting was done by an Excel software program,
the precursor to the FDEX compiler.
The
AGS
Magazine
(distributed to AGS members and libraries twice yearly)
Averaging
70 pages of content each issue with a wealth of personal names, the
pre-press text of each issue is run through an extractor (under
development) that produces a rough extraction list, then the FDEX
compiler completes the BoBdex*.
The
Master
Index to AGS Magazine Back Issues
In
each of the 108 published issues, going back to 1967, the Table of
Contents describes the articles with relevant terms in several
categories, such as County Focus, Cemeteries, Deaths, Divorces,
Slaves and African American topics.
The
AGS
Surname Booklet
(for registrants of AGS seminars held Twice yearly)
Members
attending these seminars submit up to six ancestral names that they
are researching. The booklet gives the attendees an opportunity to
connect with each other when they recognize a common ancestral name.
The
AGS
FFA Certificate Lists
Index (on the web at www.algensoc.org/main/ancestorindex.pdf)
The
names, abstracted from the First Families of Alabama Certificate
holder web listing are compiled here in an index that points to the
certificate number for an easy review of ancestors for which there
may be a connection to the visitor to the AGS web site.
Tuscaloosa
Court Book Records
Filming project
A
group of volunteers are cleaning, filming and transcribing names from
volumes of historic court record books. From each transcription a
BOBdex is compiled, printed and inserted into the respective book.
Trial
Transcript
A
rare 1929 courtroom transcript of a murder trial in Shelby County,
Alabama listed so many names that a researcher, attempting to sort
out the testimony turned to FDEX to compile an index. It will be
used in the forthcoming book by the author
*
BoBdex is an acronym for Back
of
the Book
Index If
a book has an index, the traditional place for it follows the content
pages, although an index may be printed (or web published) separately
from the book. As used in the context of the FDEX project, it
refers to the classical index format where key subject terms are
arranged alphabetically each followed by locators (usually pages
numbers). The BoBdex format is also useful as a finding aid for other
document types besides books.
-->
