That is what the agreement was; however features of donated and/or transcribed & donated databases such as state census etc once searchable and/or browsable--if you notice, that feature among many others have disappeared from RootsWeb. Other features are so convoluted and/or next to impossible to use even with their directions that what once could be accessed with a point a click will take considerably longer if you can access it at all. This was not done by mistake. I am very hopeful the the LDS material remains at a reasonable rate. Presently if you go into the library or one of the centers you can view what they have free and order in for a nominal fee copies of the original micro film, fidhe, or documents which you need to view at the library or center. True, not as convenient as from your own PC, but the price is a pittance when considering what is now going on with Ancestry and all it's owned affiliates. Sandy Blakley wrote: > >From what I understand, the agreement between rootsweb and ancestry when rootsweb sold their site to ancestry was that all of their databases would remain free to view (though filled with tons of ads from ancestry) and anything donated to rootsweb would remain free to view. I hope they continue to honor their agreement. > > Ancestry is very agressive. But they will have some competition soon as the LDS Church, who originally donated alot of their work to ancestry, is currently working on digitizing all of their records in the Salt Lake City Library to bring online at their own website, www.familysearch.org and has a huge volunteer operation going on now that anyone can help with to create indexing for all of these images. They are working presently on all of the censuses. If you want to help, go to www.familysearchindexing.org and it's simple to get going. They give you free software to download and tutorials on how to use it. Then you download an image at a time to do at your own pace. Usually takes about 45 mins. to do a page. You have up to a week to do each image, so you can squeeze it into your spare time. Each page is done by two different people and then compared. If there are any differences, it goes to an arbitrator to decide which interpretation is correct, so the greatest possible > accuracy is their goal. It will be wonderful when all of their resources are available to view, and it will be FREE to everyone! I've already seen a few images popping up in their library catalog which you can see online at www.familysearch.org It's really exciting! > > The clock is ticking for ancestry.com! If you've ever wondered why it is so hard to find names in the indexes for ancestry, it's because they hire cheap help from India and other Asian countries to do their transcribing. It's hard enough for us to read some of the old handwriting on faded films in our own language, but add into the mix someone coming from a foreign language background and you have a mess! One of our Italian families from Worcester, Pasquale and Christina DeBonis, came up totally unrecognizable in their index, when we finally found it!! I knew the family was there, ever since they arrived from Italy til the day they died, they lived on the same street, in the same house, but I could not for the life of me find them in the index. Finally I had to resort to using advance searching methods, and go through the individual family names one by one until I finally found one that connected us to the right family. Whew! I notified ancestry, and they put a note on it > for an alternate transcribed name so others could find it more easily in the future. > > Sandy > > > > Sandra Lee Blakley > 336 South 30th St. > Philomath, OR 97370 > 541-929-2259 > > > --------------------------------- > Never miss a thing. Make Yahoo your homepage. > > ------------------------------- > To unsubscribe from the list, please send an email to MAWORCES-request@rootsweb.com with the word 'unsubscribe' without the quotes in the subject and the body of the message > >

if you means familysearch.org - everything will always stay FREE access and nothing to do with Ancestry David Samuelsen Susan Hedeen wrote: > That is what the agreement was; however features of donated and/or > transcribed & donated databases such as state census etc once > searchable and/or browsable--if you notice, that feature among many > others have disappeared from RootsWeb. Other features are so convoluted > and/or next to impossible to use even with their directions that what > once could be accessed with a point a click will take considerably > longer if you can access it at all. This was not done by mistake. > > I am very hopeful the the LDS material remains at a reasonable rate. > Presently if you go into the library or one of the centers you can view > what they have free and order in for a nominal fee copies of the > original micro film, fidhe, or documents which you need to view at the > library or center. True, not as convenient as from your own PC, but the > price is a pittance when considering what is now going on with Ancestry > and all it's owned affiliates.