Crowdsourcing: NYS Museum Volunteers Digitize World War II Soldier Data, Access Database Online

From the Troy Record:

When 28,969 New York National Guard soldiers mobilized in the fall of 1940 as the United States prepared for war, clerks filled out six-by-four inch cards on each individual.
Now, thanks to a team of 15 volunteers, those records — listing names, serial number, home and unit, and later annotated with hand-written notes on whether or not the soldier was killed or wounded — are available online from the New York State Military Museum.
“I’ll bet you that we are the only state that has such an item on the web,” said retired Army Col. John Kennedy, one of the volunteers who turned the index card information into digital data.
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The data can be searched at dmna.ny.gov/historic.
The museum put this information online so people can research their family history or the history of World War II and New York’s role in it, said Jim Gandy, the museum’s assistant librarian and archivist.

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Filed under: Data Files, Resources