"This is genealogy heaven when a census is rolled out," said Matt Menashes, executive director of the National Genealogical Society. "People are waiting anxiously. It's hard to overstate."

You may be one of the people who were waiting anxiously? Perhaps you've already started searching the 1950 U.S. Federal Census? Maybe you've found yourself listed in a census for the first time? The release of U.S. census data occurs only once a decade so this is a significant event.

If the April 1 date only made you think of April Fool's Day, you may be interested to read the following, from a CBS news article:

"The records released by the National Archives and Records Administration will be indexed into a searchable website. The digitized, handwritten forms have information about household members' names, race, sex, age, address, occupations, hours worked in the previous week, salaries, education levels, marital status and the country in which their parents were born. The website will include a tool allowing users to fix any incorrect names or add missing names.

Claire Kluskens, a digital projects archivist at the National Archives, acknowledged that what will be on the website starting Friday is "a first draft," in which specific people are most likely to be found initially only by searching for whoever was listed as the head of their household.

Two outside genealogical groups, Ancestry and FamilySearch, a division of The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints, have teamed up to serve as a quality check on the records by creating their own index separate from the National Archives..."

The effort to create an accurate index could take six to nine months. Or less.