The big data is under the mountain

The [Granity Mountain Records Vault] now holds parish records and old English manuscripts dating from the 1500s, including records from London, when civil registration began in 1837, and copies of jai pu, Chinese family records, which date back before AD 1. Overall the data the Mormons have gathered is equivalent to thirty-two times the amount of information contained in the Library of Congress—and the church adds a new Library of Congress’s worth of new data every year.

…Trying to determine and then store everyone’s name and existence for perpetuity is also an insanely costly process. Today the Church has 220 data-gathering teams in forty-five countries that are making digital copies of new records. They are also converting 2.4 million microfilm records into a digital format.

…LDS photographers have produced more than 115 million images of the files, which recorded the lives of over five hundred million Italians from the nineteenth and early twentieth centuries.

Story.

Right now I imagine an MIT econ grad student in the 18th basement, writing a genius job market paper, and I am jealous.

 

46 Responses

  1. Pretty sure they won’t grant an MIT (or any other grad student) access to the files, though. You’re not allowed to rock climb on the area around the vault either.

    Would love to be proven wrong, though.

  2. Another interesting piece of the story is that most of the work of transcribing those microfilm and image records into digitized databases is done by the volunteer effort of thousands of LDS church members (like me). They’ve developed user-friendly software and have localized trainings and participation by congregations all over the world. Like, seriously some people host “Indexing” parties, with snacks and everything. It’s a grassroots RA movement– and a whole lot cheaper than even hiring an army of undergrad coders :)

  3. TBH, I’m not sure there has ever existed five hundred million Italians. The current population is 60 million, and the former Italian colonies in Somalia, Eritrea and Libya are not that populous. Of course, some emigrated to the US, but I still doubt you’d get the figure five hundred million without some serious overlap. Which is of course still impressive, but makes the article seem somewhat poorly researched.