This paper will describe how a librarian and a team of four dozen volunteers completed the digitization of 15,000 records from the Family History Index in just over a year, resulting in a highly usable database that helped Chelsea District Library earn its distinction of “Best Small Library in America” for 2008 from Library Journal and the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation. The first section will describe preparation for the project, including research in archival standards and digitization techniques, as well as the recruitment and training of the volunteer workforce. Section two will describe the decisionmaking process that went into the choice of open source software in order to create a user-friendly, free database of the records on a limited budget, as well as the work of developing and testing the database itself. Section three will offer an overview of the workflow for
staff and volunteers as they did data entry, scanning, and
proofreading of the records. Finally, the paper will describe the
resulting database, current upkeep and expansion, and how the
project served as a model for additional digitization work.