Dear all, A forward for members in the USA or with Genealogical interests there. Best, Mikey. There is pressure to start charging for databases that were planned to be available free. Many organizations are finding it much harder and much more expensive to get databases online than originally planned. Project deadlines are being missed. Non-profit implementers are now asking for donations to support the cost of maintaining the databases. Here is a recap of the status of some important databases. Ellis Island Passenger Lists http://www.ellisisland.org/history.html Plans call for extracting all passenger arrivals at the Port of New York (Ellis Island) from 1892-1924. The project was started as a LDS (Mormon) Family History Department project some years ago with thousands of volunteers extracting the information. The decision makers in Utah elected to turn over their efforts to the Statue of Liberty-Ellis Island Foundation who will complete the project and make it available in Spring 2001, at Ellis Island only, as "The American Family Immigration History Center." Plans call for placing it on the Internet thereafter but no commitment has been made regarding a date. There will be a fee for using the database at Ellis Island; therefore, it can be assumed there will be a fee to use it on the Internet. Hamburg Emigration Lists. http://www.hamburg.de/LinkToYourRoots/english/welcome.htm Launched in November 1999 on the Internet with emigration records extracted for the years 1890-1893, this venture had the ambitious plan to add a year a month. No additional years have been added since, but there have been more records added for the original time period. The initial offering was to make data available free, now they are asking for voluntary contributions to the project. There has been no commitment as to when additional years will be added. 1920 U.S. Census Two commercial ventures are competing for patron dollars: Ancestry.com at http://www.ancestry.com/search/io/main.htm and Genealogydatabase.com at http://www.genealogydatabase.com/. Ancestry.com has already placed selected portions of the census online without an index -- a head-of-household index planned for the future. Genealogydatabase.com is still claiming they will have all censuses (1790-1920) online by the end of this year. To tweak Ancestry.com's nose, this group states on their Home Page that "other sites may offer parts of the census, but no one else has it all." They state there is over 3.5 terabytes (trillion bytes) of "highest-quality information." Cost for the Ancestry.com service is $59.95 per year ($39.95 if you are already an Ancestry.com subscriber which also costs $59.95 per year). The other service has refused to pre-announce their prices. Pages of Testimony This database, which identifies more than 3 million Jews murdered in the Holocaust, was computerized when a grant was given to Yad Vashem in Jerusalem, the owner of the collection. Each Page of Testimony gives the individual's name, year of birth, names of mother and father, name of spouse (often including maiden name of women), circumstances of death, name/address of the submitter, and other information. When you order a copy of the document, you now receive a computerized version. It is easier to read than the handwriting on the original document. Though never a public commitment, there has been talk about having the database on the Internet at the end of this year, which now seems unlikely. There are instructions on how to order Pages of Testimony by e-mail, fax or in writing at http://www.yadvashem.org.il/remembrance/hallofnames/index.html Other Potential Databases Most institutions are computerizing the information they have for internal use. Have you gone to a cemetery lately? There is a good chance that if you ask for the location of a grave, the clerk will search a computer database for the information. What an incredible boon it would be to family history research if the cemeteries got together and created a massive database online that could be searched so you could locate the grave of an ancestor. The International Tracing Service in Arolsen, Germany, is the largest repository of information about individuals caught up in the Holocaust. They have computerized their index to assist them in more rapidly processing requests for information about persons caught up in the Holocaust. What a great help to people wanting to determine the fate of family if this information was placed on the Internet. Online U.S. Searchable Vital Record Indexes =========================================== A professional genealogist, Joe Beine of Denver, Colorado, has developed an Internet site that includes many links to searchable U.S. vital record indexes. It is located at http://home.att.net/~wee-monster/deathrecords.html