Wednesday, October 31, 2012

What if indexing could be done by a computer?

This is a question that I've asked myself on a number of occasions. While I do believe that one feels a real sense of accomplishment after finishing another batch of names and that many who participate feel the Spirit of Elijah as they participate in this work, that's not the reason why indexing is still done by humans. The advent of computing has immensely streamlined many of the operations of the Church. Computers have saved countless hours, tons of paper, and millions of dollars. I'm sure that members of the Church before computers felt blessed to perform service by carrying out these sometimes tedious tasks, but that didn't stop the Church from replacing this service with a computer program. That same person can now bless the lives of others with the technology that took his previous service opportunity from him. So why doesn't the same thing happen with indexing name for temple ordinances? To put it simply, computers don't read cursive (yet). I'm sure that when the day comes that they can, members around the world will bless the one who creates the technology and speeds up the work, not curse the one who denied members the opportunity to serve by indexing names.

2 comments:

  1. I do know that there are some people working on it actively. I know a student who has a version working that will fill in specific areas with a fairly high accuracy. Very good thought though.

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  2. I would like to know specifically what progress has been made in the area of handwritten documents from hundreds of years ago written in German, Latin or Spanish. Learning how to read different cursive styles must be a pain. I feel like in the meantime we are able to help in a marvelous way by giving of our time and language skills especially if we have served missions in other countries. Have you noticed how all the easy records such as the Census are done? While indexing still has its limitations, FastFilm an open-source Java program (http://bit.ly/FastFilm) can be used to download entire batches of records at a time to quickly scan through them.

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