From: "Steven Gibbs" <steven@sgibbs1.freeserve.co.uk> To: <bedford@rootsweb.com> Date sent: Tue, 23 Mar 2010 10:14:09 -0000 Subject: Re: [BDF] ANCESTRY's LMA Collection Send reply to: bedford@rootsweb.com > > But Stephen mentioned Ancestry's LMA collection? > > > > I haven't come across it before and wondered if Stephen would > > mind > > elaborating on what it may contain? > > As others have said, it is the London Metropolitan Archive, which is > the main repository for the vast majority of churches in the London > area. The initial set of entries comprises four collections:- 1) > Births & baptisms, 1813-1906 2) Marriages & banns, 1754-1921 3) Deaths > & burials, 1813-1980 4) Baptisms, marriages & burials, 1538-1812 > (this is UNINDEXED) These are all collections of the actual images, > not just indexes. > > A few entries have been added since the initial launch; these are, I > understand, mainly BTs for those churches where the LMA does not hold > the parish registers, mostly Westminster which has its own archive. > > Ancestry has promised that other documents will be added to the > collection in the future. > The great snag is that, apart from their usual mistranscriptions which ofte3n make searching for any name in any of their indexes a matter of wild guesswork, in this instance they have added the complication that very many of the entries are labelled as belonging to a parish quite different from that to which they really belong. Cliff Webb has been through a lot of their offerings and worked out what the parish really is - and has put a list of these errors on the West Surrey FHS website, from which it can be downloaded. EVE Author of The McLaughlin Guides for Family Historians Secretary, Bucks Genealogical Society

Thanks, Eve, for passing on this tip about errors and the website to look at to assist. With so many 'bad' errors in transcriptions having occurred previously on Ancestry and the complaints/comments that have been made to them, you would think that they would make sure that 'Quality control' is put in place to avoid this happening further. An index with major blunders seems hardly better than no index at all. It seems to me that special care should be taken when they have sole indexing rights to the LMA info. Perhaps I'm just too picky! Regards Lyn Australia >> > The great snag is that, apart from their usual mistranscriptions which > ofte3n make searching for any name in any of their indexes a matter > of wild guesswork, in this instance they have added the complication > that very many of the entries are labelled as belonging to a parish > quite different from that to which they really belong. > Cliff Webb has been through a lot of their offerings and worked out > what the parish really is - and has put a list of these errors on the > West Surrey FHS website, from which it can be downloaded. > EVE > Author of The McLaughlin Guides for Family Historians > Secretary, Bucks Genealogical Society > > > > The List Guidelines > > http://bedfordrootsweb.blogspot.com/ > > The Bedfordshire Surnames List > > http://homepages.ihug.co.nz/~hughw/bedf.html > > > ------------------------------- > To unsubscribe from the list, please send an email to > BEDFORD-request@rootsweb.com with the word 'unsubscribe' without the > quotes in the subject and the body of the message >