> Thanks, Allan. That's fair enough. > > I still think it's a mistake to prioritise C20 data, especially where the > marriage entries include the spouses names, over a great gap in the C19, > where the written pages are often difficult to read on microfiches. It hasn't been prioritised. It has been done first to ensure that we don't suffer shortages of source. > I've > checked JOHNSON and WARD marriages for all the missing years, and while some > microfiches are unclear, the microfilmed pages are fine. I don't understand > the rationale of leaving these years until later in the project, if maximum > usefulness is the criterion. As I explained in the previous message that John Fairlie reposted, the source that we had available for the earlier years was of poor quality. In order to produce scans for the earlier years, we have had to obtain new high quality source, and have it scanned. At the point in time where it became clear that we needed to get into buying new source, we were facing an acute shortage of scanned source. It was important to build up a stock of source as quickly as possible. The simple fact is that the fewer the names per page, the more expensive source is, both in terms of the cost of purchase and in terms of the time taken to scan. An early resolution to the scan shortage required us to get a batch of post-1865 films to enable us to build up a stock (and to enable us to get the money together to buy the early years).