Wisconsin Historical Society Name Index - Starting about 1870, Society librarians made a catalog card for every biographical sketch included in each new Wisconsin county history. They made a similar card for every obituary added to the scrapbooks they called the "Wisconsin Necrology." In addition, they frequently added catalog cards for magazine and newspaper articles about Wisconsin residents. IN all, more than 1,500 publications were indexed by Wisconsin Historical Society librarians.
After more than a century of such work, the data on the original cards was typed into a database by state employees. In 2003 and 2004, 50,000 more records were added through an agreement WISDEX: Wisconsin biography index.
