Longford list, I wanted to pass some along some comments and observations regarding the new IFHF County Longford records. An index is only as good as its indexer. This electronic index created for the various County Longford parish records has not been put together very well. Since IFHF used the same parish books (of all demominations) that you can get on microfilm from LDS, I can state that significant portions of entries are simply missing. Meaning I have copies of surname runs from the microfilmed parish books and these folks are simply missing from the new IFHF index. Either they were not transcribed in the first place or the transcription protocol and verification process were flawed. Since this was a volunteer based project, I suspect it was the latter. In addition, the index is obviously set-up to force you to buy access to each entry. For example, it is impossible to run a surname search within a specific parish without the first name. Moreover, you cannot compare entries until you open one - meaning you can't find out it's a duplicate until you pay for it. On the other hand, despite the cost, it is still an index spanning the various parishes - which is much better than trying to go through each parish book chronologically from start to finish on microfilm, looking for a particular surname. And it is cheaper than flying to Ireland. All and all, though, I would use this pay source with caution. Since it seems to be incomplete or missing information, I question its reliability for exhaustive searching. Finally, just a heads-up, the full run of the Irish b/m/d vital records index - the civil vital records - have been released to the Family Search Indexing Project and should be available soon. And they will be free since they are coming from the LDS folks. You can read up on that at the Family Search Labs site (http://labs.familysearch.org). You have to register your email, but you can then access both the "Family Search Indexing" and "Records Search" area - where the new records are being posted. I think everyone will like what they see here. And, as many of you already know, the Irish National Archives is digitizing the 1911 and 1901 Irish census, starting with Dublin here http://www.census.nationalarchives.ie/. Happy hunting, Kim V. Garvey