At 10:24 PM 6/24/98 -0500, you wrote: >Hello Folks, >There are several achives around the country which are being proposed >for closing or moving to another site.  One such is the one at FT. >Worth, TX which is being considered for being moved to GA.  This, of >course, would be great for the folks in GA, but would be a tradegy for >North Texans who have no other source other than the Dallas Public >Library for extensive genealogical research.  That's not to down-play >the part that other libraries play in providing gen. research, but the >Archives are a MAJOR source of information. >> Shadow, I understand how this is a concern to you, given where you live and the value of the archive records.   And I do respect your concerns, to the degree that they reflect your own (personally valid) needs. However, I have to tell you something -- assuming that these materials are transferred to the same facility (or someplace else in the metro Atlanta area), the news about the transfer is the Best News I Have Heard All Day! True, it will be a loss to those individuals who live in Texas.   However, for many others of us, consolidating more records in a single place (or at least a single city) can save us thousands of travel and research dollars and speed up our research considerably. Most of my family's branches have spent the last two hundred years floating between the states of Louisiana and Mississippi.  Some of them migrated into these states from Maryland, others from Virginia, others through the Carolinas.  But the point is that by 1800, they were settled down in these two states, frequently moving across the border from one state to the other. The problem I have faced is that most Louisiana records are currently kept in Fort Worth, while most Mississippi records are kept in Atlanta.   So while the actual geographic area that they migrated around in was never more than a couple of hundred miles distance from the farthest points, their records are kept in two cities that are so far distant from one another.  My husband and I do not live near either Fort Worth or Atlanta, and have to use our vacation time to do research.  If we get a great research lead in the Atlanta records during a first year of research, we may have to wait until the next year to follow it up in Fort Worth.   Then if we get another lead in Fort Worth during that second year, we have to wait until yet a third year  before we can follow that new lead up in Atlanta....   How nice it would be to find a lead in the records currently held in Atlanta, and then just go to another part of the building (or even just drive across town) to follow it up in the records that would be transferred from Fort Worth.  And then, if examining the transferred records we find a hot new lead, just head back to the part of the building (or town) that houses the current Atlanta records to follow it through... Three (or more) years of research, compacted into one slightly longer trip to a single archive in a single year's vacation...    :) So, although I understand and respect where you are coming from, Yippie Skippie!    Move 'um ALL to Atlanta! -- Colleen