September first of this year - just a couple weeks away - you will no longer be able to order microfilm from Salt Lake City's Family History Library/Archives to be sent to your nearest temple library. I have to tell you that I've talked to people at Genealogy Societies and at my public library and generally, people are panicked.
I guess my commentary that I would never be able to duplicate my research without these films to this day has not been heard.
What's up with LDS? Is it that not enough films are rented, making it financially impossible? They say that microfilm is dead, sort of like microfiche has been. Digitalized Computer Images are better. Well, digitalized images are computer dependent. And that forces you to own a computer or go to a public use computer. Believe me my cell phone and FamilySearch are compatible, but the screen is way too small to deal with all those digital images.
Read the fine print and you'll see that individual libraries are going to make decisions about what they keep when it comes to microfilm. Usually a fee is charged for the rental and then you can renew the film as you use it. What I see ahead shortly is some fast ordering by researches and a pile of last minute money to be made by LDS but also a gradual phasing out of the microfilms.
Latter Day Saints/Family Search says that by 2020, just a few years, everything they have to offer will be on their web site, Family Search. It's those few years that worry us completely. That seems almost impossible to me, considering that one category of film I use a lot has apparently been considered done by revealing baptismals, but not marriages or deaths; I keep checking. In the past I've made a great number of family groups by reading the births in a town, each consistent with parents, while not finding a marriage for the parents in that some town. Recently I spent an entire weekend on FamilySearch, playing games with crazy spellings, in order to see if I could find a marriage.
This was a personal quest and would be extremely expensive if was working it for someone else, and entirely speculative. The fact is, if the marriages were up, I could likely focus on just one or two villages, and work the births of children from there.
So I suspect something secret is going on with Latter Day Saints and the Genealogy Business in general. So far everything is free, and there is a lot of contributory work. One person I know who indexed for FamilySearch is livid to find out his work has been given over to Ancestry - a fee based site. He says if he had been asked he would have said no, but at least he wouldn't feel so disrespected.
LDS ORG on MICROFILM DISCONTINUATION ANNOUNCMENT READ THE OFFICIAL ANNOUNCEMENT.
Another aspect of the wait until 2020 is that in that year the 1950 census should be at least begun, since the 70 year Privacy wait will be over. It will be a much larger project than the 1940 since this is the post World War II "babyboom" era.
From September 2017 till sometime in 2020 you can still pursue your genealogy but if what you need is not on the web site, don't forget the "old fashioned" methods!
C Ancestry Worship Genealogy Blogspot
Showing posts with label Microfilm. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Microfilm. Show all posts
15 August 2017
02 March 2013
LDS FAMILYSEARCH PROJECTS : UPLOADING MORE INFORMATION THAT CAN HELP YOU BREAK THAT BLOCK
I check the FAMILYSEARCH website from time to time to see what's new and recently I checked and (wow!) there was some new databases loaded up that allowed me to continue research on a branch of my own family that has caused me to run into a number of blocks over time. Although I STILL WOULD PREFER TO BE ROLLING MICROFILM, rather than clicking a mouse and moving images across a computer screen, I now have the Declarations of Intent Index and then the Declarations of Intent from a state that is one of the more difficult to access information from.
I encourage you, if you are working on your own family history to check the familysearch.org site from time to time yourself.
The databases you see on Family Search are the result of intensive volunteer projects carried out mostly by Latter Day Saints church members who are dedicated to the idea that genealogy databases should be free. Microfilms are still rentable through interlibrary loans and for a reasonable fee (although I would like to see a system where a person can continue to rent for some time, so long as someone else is not waiting on the film.)
I encourage you, if you are working on your own family history to check the familysearch.org site from time to time yourself.
The databases you see on Family Search are the result of intensive volunteer projects carried out mostly by Latter Day Saints church members who are dedicated to the idea that genealogy databases should be free. Microfilms are still rentable through interlibrary loans and for a reasonable fee (although I would like to see a system where a person can continue to rent for some time, so long as someone else is not waiting on the film.)
27 November 2010
ANCESTRY DATABASES - THE POSITIVES and THE NEGATIVES : WE NEED TO USE BOOKS AND MICROFILM TOO
Although the Internet and Databases are increasingly valuable to researchers, I don't believe that in my lifetime either will eliminate the need for good "old fashioned" research skills. THE WORST PART OF RELYING on EITHER databases or Internet is that your expectations of how fast you can do research and reality will part ways. That's because there is so much that is not available and some "instant" results may spoil you when what genealogy really takes is PATIENCE!
THERE ARE STILL AREAS OF THE UNITED STATES and THE WORLD that will not give what is considered private information to databases or for microfilming. In those places there are sometimes fees or the information can only be given if you already know the details.
I may have mentioned this before but most of my personal research was done without the use of Internet or databases such as Ancestry. When Ancestry came out I was eager to see how fast the same research would take and learned I was NOT able to duplicate it USING ANCESTRY !
Recently I noticed that corrections were coming up on ANCESTRY. Some of these are provided by subscriber-members.
Every few months I look to see what is new on ANCESTRY and other databases and sometimes I find bits and pieces of information that I did not have, or that would have required archive or library fees or to pay a local researcher. So to me that is worth the exploration.
This is one of the things I did recently when I visited LDS in person; I spent time on each of their database offerings to see what would or would not come up.
To be fair in my review, there were a few pieces of information that I WAS NOT ABLE TO FIND the old fashioned way that did come up on Ancestry. The reason is that while the databases are often of no use where typists have interpreted difficult last names (bad handwriting and no knowledge of surnames in various ethnic languages, especially Slavic names) on the other hand you can SEARCH using first names or other details which may then bring up a family group (and you can see just how horribly spelled the surname was).
This is how I busted a difficult problem for a student of mine who was seeking an African American with an unusual first name and for a student of mine who was seeking his Polish great-grandfather in the state of New York.
THERE ARE STILL AREAS OF THE UNITED STATES and THE WORLD that will not give what is considered private information to databases or for microfilming. In those places there are sometimes fees or the information can only be given if you already know the details.
I may have mentioned this before but most of my personal research was done without the use of Internet or databases such as Ancestry. When Ancestry came out I was eager to see how fast the same research would take and learned I was NOT able to duplicate it USING ANCESTRY !
Recently I noticed that corrections were coming up on ANCESTRY. Some of these are provided by subscriber-members.
Every few months I look to see what is new on ANCESTRY and other databases and sometimes I find bits and pieces of information that I did not have, or that would have required archive or library fees or to pay a local researcher. So to me that is worth the exploration.
This is one of the things I did recently when I visited LDS in person; I spent time on each of their database offerings to see what would or would not come up.
To be fair in my review, there were a few pieces of information that I WAS NOT ABLE TO FIND the old fashioned way that did come up on Ancestry. The reason is that while the databases are often of no use where typists have interpreted difficult last names (bad handwriting and no knowledge of surnames in various ethnic languages, especially Slavic names) on the other hand you can SEARCH using first names or other details which may then bring up a family group (and you can see just how horribly spelled the surname was).
This is how I busted a difficult problem for a student of mine who was seeking an African American with an unusual first name and for a student of mine who was seeking his Polish great-grandfather in the state of New York.
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