Alan wrote: > How can I get access to actual documents that are on the FamilySearch > website? I have the GSU film numbers and Digital GS numbers from the > research report. (snip) Is this information the same as what can be gotten > from the local city/county health or county court system? The labs.familysearch and beta.familysearch sites have in digitized form only a teensy fraction of the microfilm holdings of the Family History Library that are listed in its catalog. If you mean items listed in the FHL catalog, you can go to your nearest family history center and order most microfilms to view there. These microfilms have a huge variety of sources. The catalog description was written at the time the microfilm was made, often 60 or more years ago, so the location of the documents may have changed as (for example) records have been taken by State Archives or custody of records given to State Historical Societies. In other instances, the copy of a volume of birth records that was deposited with the State Archives may be a transcript of the record, the original still held by a County Clerk's office -- volume designation and pagination may differ, and mistakes may be made in transcript copies. So you need to know the precise source of a given microfilm, and describe it in your citation. The FHL film numbers have nothing to do with the way records are designated by the original or succeeding repositories. For example, when citing a deed you must give the liber/book and page/folio numbers for the actual record, and add the FHL film numbers for what you were looking at. Each location, institution and authority has its own method of organizing its records. If you view a document on microfilm that is not very legible, and wish to write for a copy from the original, the FHL film number will be an irrelevant mystery to the staff at the office holding the record. Just as this list is specifically about lower-delmarva history and genealogy, there are mailing lists and message boards for both general and specific genealogical-research questions, such as http://boards.rootsweb.com/topics.researchresources/mb.ashx --this is a general category with many subtopics http://www.rootsweb.ancestry.com/%7Ejfuller/gen_mail_famhist.html --one of many lists on this site of mailing lists you can subscribe to Good hunting, Judy</HTML>