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Monday, March 8, 2010

10.4 million free records added to RecordSearch

The numbers of records added to online databases are getting into the astronomical scale. FamilySearch's Record Search announces the addition of New York State to the 1920 U.S. Census records already online. This addition constitutes an additional 10.4 million names. With all of the other records being added daily to the Internet, why is this a big deal? The index to the records was produced entirely by volunteers through the FamilySearch Indexing program and so the records are freely accessible online without paying a subscription cost and there are a whole lot more records to come.

With the addition of the New York records, the 1920 U.S. Census is 98% completely indexed. In my own experience, I have found existing indexes of the 1920 U.S. Census to be somewhat spotty. For example, my grandfather was listed as "Tamer" rather than "Tanner." But a search in the current collection shows him immediately. Unfortunately, the images are not yet online and given the current agreements with Ancestry.com regarding the upgrading of Ancestry.com's images, I guess that the images will be available only through the subscription site. Maybe one of my reader's with more access to the inner workings of the agreement between Ancestry.com and the LDS Church can clarify that issue?

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