Listers, I am forwarding to you some comments from a person who can help us understand what the new site is all about. This is NOT a statement from the LDS church. For those of you that are accessing the new site, this is worth reading. The am leaving off the name of the submitter. "I've read so many comments from people on these lists, and I just have to try to help everyone understand. First off it is TEST site. They are still adding things and trying to work it out. Please be patient when it is busy. Please understand when certain regions of the world are not included. Just plain be patient!!!!! Most of us have no comprehension of how much information the LDS Church has gathered on the genealogy front. Let me try to help you understand what the LDS Church is supplying. They have a program on the computers at their Family History Libraries called Ancestral File. I don't know exactly when it started, but I believe it was in the early 1980's. They asked initially members of their church, and then they expanded it to anyone who was interested, to submit their genealogy pedigrees with as much information as possible on birth, marriage, death, parents. At the outset they said they (the Church) would not be verifying the information. They were offering their services to collect data so people could access it and perhaps locate other people working on the same lines so they didn't have to duplicate their efforts. Thus if someone was in Mississippi and someone else was in Belgium trying to trace the same family, and if they both submitted their information to the Ancestral File, they could then contact each other and share sources and information and perhaps split up the research so one was checking in one area, and the other person could check in another area. Until the information submitted to the Ancestral File is verified by others who access it, there is no guarantee it is correct, but at least it is a place to start. They receive thousands and thousands of additional names all the time, and it takes a lot of work to incorporate it into the File. They try to update the AF as often as they can, but sometimes it is 1-2 years. While there are some people working at the main Family History Library in Salt Lake City who are paid employees and others are paid by the Church to travel world wide making microfilms and obtaining books and other records, the VAST MAJORITY of those involved in genealogy in the LDS Church are amateurs and volunteers. They cannot and will not be able to go in and change every single entry that has an error. The other source being made available is their IGI or International Genealogical Index. The LDS Church arrived in the Salt Lake Valley in 1847. Almost immediately the members of the Church were encouraged to gather records of their ancestors and current families and make the information available to the Church. Up until 1970 the individual submissions were typed BY VOLUNTEERS on index cards and filed in a section called the Temple Index Bureau. After 1970 most of the submissions were entered into the computerized IGI. The members were asked and are still asked to be as accurate as possible. I, for one, am not perfect. I have checked every available source I could on some of my family and thought it was right, only to finally find an official document, such as a birth certificate, marriage license, etc., that showed I had a misspelled name or incorrect date all along. This happens on the IGI, too. However, everyone tries to be accurate. Because there are literally MILLIONS of entries, and because most of the people involved are volunteers, they cannot go back and change every one of the mistakes that people catch. That is what we have to do in our own records and then make a note of what is verified and what is not. The LDS Church also has an extraction program where they go around the world and make microfilms of official parish records, land records, civil records, family histories, biographical books, etc. and then VOLUNTEERS read every entry of the parish record and extract the births and marriages one by one, transfer them to a card, then someone else comes along and does it again to see if they read it the same way, and then another volunteer enters it on to a computer program, and another comes along and enters it again to see if it matches. Then these entries are also added to the IGI increasing the huge base of information available to EVERYONE who has an interest. I am greatful for the tremendous service they have made. My wife's family comes from Berlin. There are about 19 parishes in that city alone, and there was no rule that you had to have all your children baptized in the parish you physically lived in, and there are 100's and 100's of microfilms for Berlin alone. As each update of the IGI comes out we have tried to find missing names and occasionally we succeed because someone took the time to volunteer to do the extraction and found the baptism or marriage we needed in one of those 19 parishes rather than us trying to read all those films. (They don't extract the deaths, just births and marriages). An extension of the extraction program has been done in recent years where thousands and thousands of volunteers in the LDS Church have been entering the Temple Index Bureau data from the index cards onto the computer to appear in the IGI again making more and more information available to us all. On one of the mail lists someone complained because they saw an entry that just said someone was "of" a place and had only an approximate year of birth. Many of those types of entries are from the early days when the Church put things on index cards. The early members of the Church listed their ancestors as best as they knew them. Many did not have records with them, so they had to do it from memory. Sometimes they knew where an ancestor lived, but not necessarily where they were born, so they just said they were "of Boston" or "of Paris" or "of Barcelona", etc., etc. > My ancestors 1st submitted one early ancestor as Mrs. Jack Griggs, because that is all they knew. Then someone else remembered her name was Ann, so it was turned in again as Mrs. Ann Griggs. Finally someone found a record showing she was Ann Hills, so it was done again. They were from Dover, Kent, England, so the cards usually said "of Dover". That is what the living descendants at the time remembered. Only after parish records became available did we find out Ann HILLS was actually born in Sandwich, Kent, England, on 10 Dec 1784 and christened in St. Clement's in Sandwich on 3 Jan 1785. But someone who thought they were being thorough turned it in with 3 Jan 1785 as the birth date, when it was actually the christening date. So this ancestor is on the IGI 5 or more times with varying amounts of information. Now that the parish records are on microfilm I can find her exact name, her exact birth date and place, her exact christening, the correct date and place of her marriage, etc. Although the early listings put in by my ancestors were incomplete and even wrong, at least I knew where to start looking thanks to their efforts. Give the new program a chance. If you get one new piece of information, you have been helped. Sure there may be errors. That is the fun part--you get to check it out. We all need to complain less and be more appreciative for the work others have done to help. I thank each and every one of the people on all these mail lists who have helped me dig a little deeper into my heritage. I hope this will help everyone understand a little better what is being made available on the LDS site."