Monday, March 19, 2007

Discontinued Access to Ancestry.com Databases

For many years, Ancestry.com has provided free access to patrons of family
history centers around the world. Ancestry has informed the Church that as
of April 1, 2007, it will discontinue this free access to the full
Ancestry.com service.

Free access through Ancestry.com to the following databases will continue:

1. Index and images for the 1880, 1900 and 1920 U.S. censuses
2. Full name indices for the British 1841-1891 censuses (England and Wales)
3. World War I draft cards indices as created and miscellaneous other
databases

Free access is likely to be discontinued for the remainder of the
Ancestry.com databases including:

1. Index and images for the 1930 U.S. census
2. Index and images for the 1901 British census (England, Scotland, and
Wales)

At this point, Ancestry.com is not offering an option for family history
centers to independently purchase commercial or library site licenses.
Patrons, of course, may choose to subscribe directly to Ancestry.com.

Free access to online databases is important and we therefore intend to add
many new databases to FamilySearch.org (the website of the Mormon Family
History Library). Much of the data preparation will be accomplished
through the online indexing program available at FamilySearchIndexing.org.
We encourage you to visit the website to learn more.

Volunteers have already begun indexing the 1900 U.S. census and other
projects. Other censuses and vital record collections will be indexed as
soon as the 1900 U.S. census project is completed. The more volunteers that
participate, the sooner access can be provided. Since access to databases on
FamilySearch.org is free to all, we anticipate that this will be of great
interest to individuals around the world. We are also exploring
opportunities to provide broader access to additional databases from other
online service providers.

Please inform patrons regarding our plans to provide access to records and
invite them to help by participating in the FamilySearch Indexing projects.
We will communicate as more information becomes available. Thank you for all
that you do on behalf of our patrons.

fhcsupport@support.familysearch.org
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Ukrainian Genealogy Group - Prince Edward Island

http://uggpei.isn.net

http://uggpei.blogspot.com/

contact: Ted Lomatski 902 569-8611

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