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?

Record Search adds more Mexican States to the Catholic Church Records

FamilySearch's Record Search Pilot has just added Baja Sur, Nuevo Leon, Sinaloa and Sonora to the Mexico Catholic Church records. This brings the total number of states and regions contained in the collection to twelve. If you are unaware, Mexico has 32 states.

Those states and regions now included in the collection are the following:

• Aguascalientes
• Baja California
• Baja California Norte
• Baja California Sur
• Campeche
• Chihuahua
• Coahuila
• Colima
• Durango
• Nuevo Leon
• Sinaloa
• Sonora

The records are organized by state or region, then ciudad or pueblo and finally the parroquias (parishes).

Inside Google Books: Sharing Latin American works from the University of Texas

Inside Google Books: Sharing Latin American works from the University of Texas

Google completes 500,000 volume digitization project with University of Texas

In a recent post on Inside Google Books, Google announced completion of their digitization project with the University of Texas Libraries and the inclusion of over 500,000 unique Latin American volumes into the Google Books index. Quoting from the announcement:

Since we launched our partnership with the University of Texas at Austin in 2007, we have been working hard to make their unique Nettie Lee Benson Latin American Collection accessible to readers online. The collection is one of the largest Latin American collections in the world, and is renowned for the scope and breadth of its materials covering Mexico, Central America, the Caribbean island nations, South America, and the Latino presence in the United States.

Quoting from the University of Texas Libraries Website about the collection:

The Nettie Lee Benson Latin American Collection, a unit of the University of Texas Libraries, is a specialized research library focusing on materials from and about Latin America, and on materials relating to Latinos in the United States. Latin America is here defined to include Mexico, Central America, the Caribbean island nations, South America, and areas of the United States during the period they were a part of the Spanish Empire or Mexico. Named in honor of its former director (1942-1975), the Nettie Lee Benson Collection contains over 970,000 books, periodicals, pamphlets, and microforms; 4,000 linear feet of manuscripts; 19,000 maps; 11,500 broadsides; 93,500 photographs; and 50,000 items in a variety of other media (sound recordings, drawings, video tapes and cassettes, slides, transparencies, posters, memorabilia, and electronic media). Periodical titles are estimated at over 40,000 with 8,000 currently received titles and over 3,000 newspaper titles. Initially endowed with a superb collection of rare books and manuscripts relating to Mexico, the Benson Collection now maintains important holdings for all countries of Latin America with special concentrations on the countries of the Río de la Plata, Brazil, Chile, Peru, and Central America. The Mexican American Library Program, a department of the collection established in 1974, has gathered extensive research materials in all subject areas related to the U.S. Southwest and Latino culture in the U.S. In sum, the book collection of the Benson Collection represents approximately ten percent of all of the volumes in the University of Texas Libraries, the fifth largest academic library in the United States. While the purchase of private libraries laid the foundation for the Benson Collection, the acquisition of current publications is now the major factor in its growth. Researchers from the U.S. and abroad have been attracted to this remarkable resource through the last eight decades, coming to consult materials accumulated from all parts of the world, in many languages, dating from the fifteenth century to the present.

it is truly amazing the amount of information currently available online.

Experiment confirms New FamilySearch hypothesis

The following observations are not intended to be critical of the New FamilySearch program or its programmers. It appears, that despite their best efforts, the relatively unsophisticated users of the program do not understand or cannot follow the instructions and can thereby ignorantly produce extensive duplication.

Having observed thousands of Ordinance Cards printed from New FamilySearch, I suspected that the number of duplicates being processed was extremely high, despite claims that the program was having an impact on the number of duplicate ordinances being submitted. In a recent situation, a New FamilySearch user presented a stack of over fifty cards for processing. It was immediately evident to us that nearly all of the cards were requests for duplicate ordinances, that is, ordinances that had been performed previously.

From its inception, New FamilySearch was supposed to help avoid duplication of effort in the performance of Temple Ordinances. It was immediately apparent to me, at the time the program was first introduced, that there were a number of very simple ways some one using the program would end up with ordinance cards for work that had already been completed. As time passed, I was constantly aware that a significant amount of the work being done using New FamilySearch was far from original despite efforts by the programmers to discourage duplicates.

When we got the recent stack, we decided to see if my supposition or hypothesis that it was very easy to produce cards for duplicate work could be proved. So, one of my assistants took some of the cards and made copies and then returned the original cards to their owner. Later, using the copies we went into New FamilySearch and looked up each of the people for whom cards had been printed. Within seconds, by clicking on the "Find Duplicates" button, duplicate individuals for all of the cards were found and the records combined thus showing that the ordinances had already been performed. It was apparent that the user had made no effort at all to search for duplicates and had simply clicked on the green arrows and printed the Family Ordinance Request forms. However, we are not in a position to even comment to the user about the duplication.

In discussing this situation with the users, in a non-confrontational way, we do not believe that they are acting other than out of lack of knowledge of the existence of duplicates. Notwithstanding the multiple admonitions and warnings now built into New FamilySearch, a significant number of people are simply ignoring the warnings and proceeding to print Family Ordinance Requests that duplicate prior ordinance work. In discussing this situation with knowledgeable New FamilySearch sources, we understand that additional changes will be made to the program to enhance its ability to discourage duplication. If avoidance of duplication is a positive result, then the changes cannot come any too soon.

Other than digitization -- preserving the physical records

Digitization of records is one way to preserve our letters, photos, and other memorabilia from our family history, but what happens to the documents once they are captured in digital form? Unfortunately, many people believe that the documents can then be discarded. There is something fundamentally important to our heritage to be able to actually hold a physical document signed or created by your ancestor.

I have been scanning and photographing documents for years now and have a huge digital collection, but likewise have a huge collection of paper documents, photos, cards, letters, and every other type of document imaginable. Some of the documents are so trivial that I don't worry much about preservation, others are priceless. From time to time I like to look at some of the major preservation sites online to see if any of the recommendations have changed in the last few months or so.

My favorite place for information is the Library of Congress. But I have found a lot of information on the National Archives Website also. The amount of information is phenomenal and very all inclusive. I guess the real challenge is time to preserve so many documents, space to store them and how to file them when they are stored. We have boxes of documents stored all through our house. I presently have almost 61,000 digitized documents with almost that many left to scan. I hope I live long enough to process all that information into usable formats.

Once you have a large collection of digital images, you need to become interested in Digital Preservation. See the National Digital Information Infrastructure & Preservation Program of the Library of Congress for extensive information on digital file preservation.

Record Search adds records from Illinois and the Netherlands

FamilySearch Record Search has added over 500,000 records from the Cook County, Illinois Birth Certificate records. The collection includes the City of Chicago and covers the time period from 1878 to 1922 containing over 1.5 million names. From the FamilySearch Wiki:

Legislation in 1819 required physicians to record births and deaths for their practices. They were then to transmit the information to their medical society who was to publish the information in the newspapers. In 1843 a law was passed where relatives of a deceased person could appear before the clerk of the county commissioner’s court and report information regarding the death. The recording of vital records was voluntary until 1877 so few births and deaths were recorded. A fire in 1871 destroyed the Cook County Courthouse and nearly all previous records housed there. The few existing originals that were created by the county clerk may be found in the county clerk’s office or in the Illinois Regional Archives Depository (IRAD Health).
In 1877 the State Board of Health was created to supervise registration of births and deaths. All births and deaths were to be reported to the county clerk by physicians. However, many were still not registered because the penalties for non-compliance were weak. In 1915 the state of Illinois gave the responsibility of recording births and deaths to local registrars who reported the information to the county clerk and the State Board of Health (now know as the Illinois Department of Public. By 1919 it is estimated that 95% of the population was recorded in the vital records.
Marriage returns were submitted to the county clerk by the minister or justice of the peace who performed the marriage. Most of these records were also destroyed by the fire in 1871. Only a few marriage records exist prior to the fire. Couples were not required to obtain a marriage license until 1877. A statewide register of marriages was started in 1962 as county clerks forwarded marriage information to the Illinois Department of Health. By 1918, it is estimated that the vital records covered 95% of the population. A few marriage records have markers shaped like spades that indicate records with document numbering problems. When searching the collection displays a image with such markings, a second search might yield an unmarked marriage record with a new number without spades.

New records were also added to the Netherlands, Gelderland Province Civil Registration. The collection contains only images but the are arranged by municipality. Again, from the FamilySearch Wiki: "Record types found on the films are births, marriages, deaths, 10 year indexes, marriage intentions, marriage proclamations, and marriage supplements. The events are recorded either totally by hand or in partially pre-printed books where the information is then entered by hand."