I just took the tour and WOW!
The facility is larger and absolutely BEAUTIFUL; light, airy, cream walls and blue and green carpet with a leaf motif and large sepia toned photographs of ancestors of various ethnic groups - the Irish, the Poles, etc.
THERE ARE DOZENS OF COMPUTERS set up to link to useful genealogy research sites! There are large classrooms for telecasting classes from Salt Lake and teaching while being telecast to Salt Lake. The Church did not waste a dime in designing and implementing a state of the art facility.
HERE ARE SOME CHANGES :
ALL CENSUS RECORDS ON MICROFILM ARE GONE.ALL PASSENGER/SHIP RECORDS ON MICROFILM ARE GONE.
(This may not be so positive. I have in the past tried to duplicate my research on Ancestry (which is available for free at the Family History Center) and COULD NOT DO IT. I'm great at figuring out bad handwriting and most database entry people must not be... I would rather turn microfilm and read page after page than try guessing some of the mispellings that would lead to the same information. I've also found information ON THE BACK of handwritten cards and indexes.)
THERE ARE STILL MICROFILMS AND MICROFILM READERS.
TO ORDER FILMS YOU MUST DO SO ON LINE.
ALL THE BOOKS THAT ARE NO LONGER UNDER COPYRIGHT LAW ARE REMOVED TO SALT LAKE WHERE THEY ARE BEING DIGITIZED.
THE OLD MAP ROOM/MAPS IS GONE.
SOME OF THE LINKS ON THE COMPUTERS such as INTERNMENT.COM are still paid or trial; you don't need to come into the library to do that. FOOTNOTE DATABASE IS FREE OF CHARGE WHEN USED AT FAMILY HISTORY CENTER. In some cases I'm having better luck with Footnote than Ancestry. The name of Footnote is now Fold3.
THERE IS SOMETHING POSITIVE TO BE SAID FOR A DESTINATION THAT IS DEVOTED TO GENEALOGY and to BE SURROUNDED BY OTHER RESEARCHERS. I CONTINUE TO BE INSPIRED BY HEARING OTHER RESEARCHERS STORIES including their research methods.
There are some rules and regulations stated which I am glad for. One of those is no sexual harassment or vulgarity. I am glad this is the case as that is a problem I had with a male or two while researching a few years ago. It was enough to make me stop using LDS and moving my base of operations elsewhere.
