The 1940 U.S. Federal Census is here... well, kind of.
Karen K | Monday, April 2, 2012 It would just be nice if we could access it.
Apparently the traffic has been much higher than anticipated, and has crashed the National Archives website. I had anticipated the problem of their servers being overwhelmed, so I don't know why The National Archives couldn't.
For me, you can go onto the site and search-- it just won't load any images. Irritatingly, though, the site makes you think that the images will load, because it tells you they're loading.
It lies.
From the above-linked ABC article:
"We are having a server problem," said Susan Cooper, director of public and media communications at the National Archives. "Because there is such a huge volume, they're having a hard time keeping up."Cooper told ABC News that the website had 22.5 million hits in the first three hours of operation, far more than anticipated.
"We knew we would have high traffic volume, and we thought we were prepared for it," she said, 'but I think we've been very surprised by actually how popular it is."
As irritating as this technological SNAFU is, it indeed goes to show that genealogy is a widespread American interest-- the second or third largest hobby in the country, in fact-- and the folks at the National Archives seem to have underestimated its popularity.
Karen K
Well, I was able to access it very early this morning (I get up at 5 am during the week), found what I needed, and had no problems. Not sure if this is because of the time (the least busy), or because it's fixed...