Jon Lebkowsky says,
Here’s a project we’re working on to gather Katrina data. Donated money? Please donate a little time. Join the Katrina PeopleFinder Project. It’s easy. All you need is an internet connection and the ability to copy data into a form.
After Katrina, many friends and family members have been separated and left with no clear way to find each other. Hundreds of internet web sites are gathering hundreds, and probably thousands, of entries about missing persons or persons who want to let others know they’re okay.
The problem is: the data on these sites has no particular form or structure. So it’s almost impossible for people to search or match things up. Plus there are dozens of sites – making it hard for a person seeking lost loved ones to search them all.
The Katrina PeopleFinder Project NEEDS YOUR HELP to enter data about missing and found people from various online sources. We’re requesting as little as an hour of your time. All you need to do is help read unstructured posts about missing or found persons, and then add the relevant data to a database through a simple online form.
Link to PeopleFinderVolunteer wiki. Email: katrina-people (at) activist-tech.org.
Related: “Non-programmers” can help at the link above, but “programmer” volunteers are also needed to consolidate structured survivor information: Link to “Katrina refugee data entry project”.
(Thanks, David DeMaris)
Update from Jon Lebkowsky:
We had such an overwhelming response to the Katrina PeopleFinder Project that we couldn’t handle the data entry load with the available db, but the plan was to move to something Salesforce.com is setting up. It’ll probably be ready tomorrow. People who still want to volunteer can join an email list by sending a blank message to peoplefinder-subscribe@activist-tech.org – we’ll use that list to update people when the db is ready for more entries.
Update: the system is up and running again, here’s a link