Thought I would pass this on, sent to me from Aus Chris In what officials say will be a quantum leap forward in providing family history information online, the LDS Church has announced a plan designed to eventually help provide access to as many as 80 billion family records on the Web, in addition to the tens of billions of records it is currently The new Records Access program is being announced this week . The family records program is the one replacing Family Search, I believe. I took that class at the genealogy jamboree a year ago in St. George UT. It isn't original records but the genealogy trees that people enter. There will be a way to contact the people who submitted trees though and collaborate on them. Eventually all the original source records will be digitized but that is a twenty year project and who knows how they will be distributed - DVD or on-line?

Hi Chris, Caroline and list, This project is well underway, and I have been helping out with doing some of the transcriptions from the original records - currently 1900 census of USA. (my thought was that the quicker the USA gets done they will move on to UK records!) From what I have read recently there is a slight change in emphasis from the original idea of transcribing all their holdings (millions of microfilm) to maintaining an index of everything on the web. So for example, if they think your ancestor appears on ancestry.com or findmypast.com they will point you in that direction, but you will obviously have to pay that other organisations fees to access it. I suspect that this has arisen because if they provide everything for free all those organisations that currently charge for accesss would go out of business. There has already been a bit of a "spat" over the 1881 census. Presumambly all these other organisations will provide the LDS with an index of all their holdings. I await all the new developments with great interest. Regards Sandra Chris & Caroline wrote: > >Thought I would pass this on, sent to me from Aus >Chris > >In what officials say will be a quantum leap forward in providing family >history information online, the LDS Church has announced a plan designed to >eventually help provide access to as many as 80 billion family records on >the Web, in addition to the tens of billions of records it is currently >The new Records Access program is being announced this week . > >The family records program is the one replacing Family Search, I believe. I >took that class at the genealogy jamboree a year ago in St. George UT. It >isn't original records but the genealogy trees that people enter. There >will be a way to contact the people who submitted trees though and >collaborate on them. Eventually all the original source records will be >digitized but that is a twenty year project and who knows how they will be >distributed - DVD or on-line? > > > >............................................. >Want to contact the local community? >Please visit Hampshire Parish Jottings >http://hants.parishjottings.org.uk >............................................. > >------------------------------- >To unsubscribe from the list, please send an email to [email protected] with the word 'unsubscribe' without the quotes in the subject and the body of the message > > > >