Jayne, Several points to be kept in mind. The people producing the information that you require are all volunteers and much of the information has been transcribed over many years and is in paper form. It has been and will be for sometime much easier to fiche than store on CD. The answer to this is simple, software required for indexing and creating CD's is costly, means most members of Societies requiring new skills to trasnfer the details and opens up the records to being easily copied. The number of people producing information compared to the number using it is few, those producing the information are usually volunteers, and most societies will tell you that these are few and far between. So the answer here is very simple, until more people join in and share the workload the chances of getting information in the format that you require are limited. Most societies are Charities putting the revenue from their tranmscriptions sold on CD and microfiche back into further projects. Four years ago I realised that there was very little information on the Internet for Cambridgeshire, Huntingdonshire and Bedfordshire and vowed to do something about it. I would say to everyone who asks a question about availability - Is there something you could do? You are not limited by country or an audience on the Internet. Creating web pages of records or information you have available means that it is readily available to the world. If all researchers did this how much further would we get.... Kind regards, Martin Edwards Chairman - Cambridgeshire Family History Society http://www.cfhs.org.uk Maintainer - Cambridgeshire History Portal http://www.cambridgeshirehistory.com Maintainer - Local Ancestors http://www.localancestors.com Webmaster - GenWeb Cambridgeshire http://www.rootsweb.com/~engcam Webmaster - GenWeb Huntingdonshire http://www.rootsweb.com/~enghun Webmaster - GenWeb Bedfordshire http://www.rootsweb.com/~engbdf Maintainer - GENUKI Cambridgeshire pages http://www.genuki.org.uk/big/eng/CAM/ Maintainer - GENUKI Bedfordshire pages http://www.genuki.org.uk/big/eng/BDF/ Maintainer - GenConnect BBS Cambridgeshire http://cgi.rootsweb.com/~genbbs/genbbs.cgi/England/Cambridgeshire Maintainer - GenConnect BBS Huntingdonshire http://cgi.rootsweb.com/~genbbs/genbbs.cgi/England/Huntingdonshire Maintainer - GenConnect BBS Bedfordshire http://cgi.rootsweb.com/~genbbs/genbbs.cgi/England/Bedfordshire Personal Homepages http://ourworld.compuserve.com/homepages/Martin_Edwards_2 mailto: Martin_Edwards_2@compuserve.com ----- Original Message ----- From: "Jayne Dafforn" <JayneDafforn@torviewbun.freeserve.co.uk> To: <ENG-EAST-ANGLIA-L@rootsweb.com> Sent: Saturday, March 31, 2001 2:15 PM Subject: [EEA] Fiche or Cd Hi List I have been reading various e mails about records on fiche or cds and it seems strange to me that fiche is still in use when it is so much easier to use cds. Also can someone tell me what records and censuses are available on cd other that the 1881 census and vital records and where they can be bought in the UK? Many thanks Jayne ==== ENG-EAST-ANGLIA Mailing List ==== This list is for people who have an interest in the ESSEX, SUFFOLK, NORFOLK,BEDFORDSHIRE and CAMBRIDGESHIRE regions. ENG-EAST-ANGLIA-L-request@rootsweb.com ============================== Visit Ancestry's Library - The best collection of family history learning and how-to articles on the Internet. http://www.ancestry.com/learn/library