I just got my Family Tree Magazine when I got home - there is an article in there that was quite interesting. It's about The Norway Project where they are working to reconstruct family groups through community records - these family groups will be searchable online in the future.

The article says:

Grouped families aren't the only exciting aspect of this effort known as the 'Norway Project' according to Roger Magneson, a Family Reconstitution project manager.
"After we extract the genealogical information from the bygdebøker (pronounced beeg-duh-booh-ker), we'll merge into it data from the 1865 census, 1900 census and parish registers," he explains. "This will provide a rich database." FamilySearch, DIS-Norge, and the University of Tromsø have been indexing Norway's 1875 census (the current version at is incomplete); these data may be merged, too.
In a technological breakthrough, merged data will automatically link to individuals in the bygdebøker database. "Back in the 1980s, the intent was to use computers to merge single-event records into records describing an individual with multiple life events," Magneson explains. "But it required a genealogist to confirm that records matched."

It goes on to say that they will be posting the first searchable bygdebøker (translated that means 'community books' or local histories which document Norwegian farms back to the 1600s or before - entire households are sometimes listed with dates for births, marriages and deaths) by the end of June this year! Now for some even more interesting information for those of you with the patience and ability to endure getting through this post ... it states that:

"Preliminary data from the Norway Project show another interesting result. "In one clerical district, there were 957 family trees, but one tree accounted for 80 percent of the population. That means there was essentially one family in that district," Magneson says. If these data remain consistant across the country, "Norway is probably less than 400 unique families."
The Norway Project will line up those trees like a national genealogical forest, with overlapping branches but distinct trunks. But Magneson says this is just the start. Family Reconstitution already has data sets lined up from Scotland, Iceland, Britain, Mexico, the Polynesian islands, and Aztec and Eskimo sources. "The Norway Project is the pilot to do this for every country in the world."

So is that cool or what????

From Renee's post on MyFamily.com.