FamilySearch Wiki:WikiProject Getting Started as a New Contributor

Welcome
We are excited to welcome you into the growing ranks of those who want to help make the Wiki a better place for genealogy researchers everywhere.

Sometimes the hardest thing to do is to get started, so we've created this "WikiProject" to give you ideas and help you as a new contributor to learn about some of the most simple, basic things you can do to get started improving articles in the Wiki.

To help you with these projects, see the bottom of the page for a listing of a few states that have not been adopted, so should have most of the county pages with very little content. BUT YOU ARE FREE TO CONTRIBUTE TO ANY PAGE ANYWHERE IN THE WIKI .... WE ARE COMMUNITY BUILT!

Public Libraries Project
You can do this on one county page, or as many as you would like (there are a bunch).

Go to any state in the U.S. and choose a county. Then scroll down to the Societies and Libraries section of the page and click to edit that section (the check mark to the right of the title).

Then, go to Public Libraries.com at Click on the state you have chosen. Once the state listing comes up, to the right there will be the option to pull up a listing by county. Click on the county you have chosen.

It will then pull up a list of all libraries in the county. You can copy and paste this list into the Wiki. You may notice some of them have the word Website under that library's listing. This is the link to that library's website. The word will cut and paste, but the link will not. The easiest way to get the link is to position your cursor over that blue word and right click. When the menu comes up, right click on "copy shortcut." Then, come over to the Wiki and highlight the word "Website" and go up to the menu and click on the "Insert/Edit Link" button and when the popup screen comes up, use "Control V" to paste that shortcut into the URL address. Then save it and it should show up as a hyperlink to that library website (a good way to check is it will normally say something in the last part of the name that indicates the branch).

Once you have done this, you have completed a Wiki project and have joined the ranks of contributor !!! Add the Wiki Contributor badge to your User Page.

Family History Center Project
Go to any state in the U.S. and choose a county. Then scroll down to the Societies and Libraries section of the page and click to edit that section (the check mark to the right of the title).

Then go to the Family History Center Location link,

Enter the country (United States) Enter the state (the one you chose) Enter the county (the one you chose) DO NOT ENTER A CITY

it will then give you a list of Family History Centers in that county which you can cut and paste (see directions above in Library project) into the Wiki.

Caution *** if the list comes up starting with Abilene, Texas, and you didn't choose Taylor County, TX as the county you are working on, that means there are no FHCs in the county you chose. It defaults to giving you a list of every center in the country, so you will need to try another county.

You can also just scan through that list that comes up and pick a county that way, then go back and pull up the list of every center in that county.

Finished one county ? Congratulations, add the Wiki Contributor badge to your User Page, you have joined the ranks !!!