Data from the 1940 United States Census was released to the public on April 2, 2012. This is something that many genealogists have been waiting for. The excitement over the ability to access the 1940 United States Census caused a virtual traffic jam at the National Archive’s website.
I have lost track of how many news articles, blogs, and genealogy podcasts have talked about the 1940 United States Census in the months, weeks, and days before it was made available to all genealogists. This data is the biggest, most exciting, most anticipated resource in a long time, and is something that overly excited genealogists could not wait to get their hands on.
The National Archives dedicated a page on their website to the 1940 Census. It is an official website that is run by the United States Government. The census data was brought online through a partnership between the National Archives and Archives.com. It certainly seemed like this was the best place to go in order to get full access to the 1940 census data, images, maps, and descriptions.
People went to the website in numbers that turned out to be greater than it could accommodate. A spokeswoman for the National Archives, Miriam Kleiman, spoke with the Associated Press. It turns out that the website registered more than 22 million hits in just four hours time from almost 2 million different users. The National Archives has an official Twitter account. Sometime after 5:00 in the evening on April 2, 2012, it tweeted that the website had received 37 million hits since the 1940 U.S. Census information had been released at 9:00 that morning.
The result of all these visits caused what has been described as a “virtual traffic jam”. It began almost right away. The National Archives did not anticipate that they would get this huge volume of visitors so quickly. It was expected that the traffic jam would, eventually, ease. Computer experts were working on making the site faster, and adding servers.
An update was released on April 4, 2012, at midnight EDT. It says:
“We continue to make improvements to the site. You will now be able to search, download and print individual images. Thank you for your patience while we continue to make updates”.
In other words, the website at the National Archives is still a work in progress. Those who have had problems trying to access the 1940 Census data from that website might want to wait a few more days, and then try again. People are super excited about it right now, but, that excitement will dissipate over time. You will get your chance to check out the 1940 Census, but you may have to exercise some patience first.
Image by Daniel Dionne on Flickr