Richard, To address your point about the census discs, "why would you ever use them?": There seems to be a belief that once some web site goes online it will remain there, and available, forever. The reality of the situation is that it remains there only as long as somebody maintains the content, that somebody pays the fees which support the server which holds and (well) serves the data to the web site and finally somebody pays the renewal fees for the "domain" registration. There may also be other fees to do with royalties on the data and rental of lookup services, etc., but this is a minimum. The main point is that a web site will only remain available while someone or some organization is prepared to go on shelling out money for it to stay there. (On a different "tack," I also know of some researchers who want to continue their hobby when they are at their "weekend cottage" where the internet isn't available yet, or while they are traveling and can't rely on their access speed or quality.) For private and commercial sites this is a simple financial decision. For "public" sites (and i'm including all branches, and types of publicly funded corporation here, libraries, universities, even Canada Post) the decision is largely based on the prevailing politics and current public opinion. For instance the Library and Archives of Canada have just had their budget "slashed" and since virtually everything they do provides some sort of service, some of their services are bound to suffer. If, on the other hand, you actually own a data disk or a book or a copy of a document on whatever media, it is yours for as long as you decided you want to keep it. You are not relying on someone else's decision on what should remain available and what should be deleted, to keep it available to you. Keeping proprietary software accessible can be a pain but you CAN rely on it to be there when you want it. I realize that many readers will look at my sig. line and think, "Well, he's bound to say that!" and I admit there is a good chance that I'm biased, but I'm sure that if you just think about it you will realize what I'm saying is factual. Not some tissue of lies or some sales pitch, or even a political policy. Online sites are fantastic resources for finding data. There's nothing better. But once you have found your data and have decided you want to be able to access it at any time then you should look to getting some sort of a copy of it under your control so you can ensure it is always available to you. Malcolm Archive CD Books Canada Inc. President: Malcolm Moody PO Box 11 Manotick Ontario, K4M 1A2 Canada. (613) 692-2667 1-888-692-2660 - Toll-free WEB SITE: http://www.ArchiveCDBooks.ca FACEBOOK: https://www.facebook.com/pages/Archive-CD-Books-Canada/99339348650 On 13 May, 2012, at 3:00 AM, nova-scotia-request@rootsweb.com wrote: > Message: 2 > Date: Sat, 12 May 2012 16:16:53 -0300 > From: Richard Noble <nobler@accesswave.ca> > Subject: Re: [NS-L] [LL] Familysearch 1881 Census CDs > To: Nova scotia <NOVA-SCOTIA@rootsweb.com>, LUNEN-Links > <LUNEN-LINKS-L@rootsweb.com> > Message-ID: <001301cd3073$ca986650$9b2e8e18@ricocpv8lc3ftj> > Content-Type: text/plain; charset=iso-8859-1 > > As one reads the postings about the 1881 census. I can't help but think, > there is something > weird about the whole thing. > > If you have the census disks, I would suggest that they are out of date, and > why would you ever use them? > > You can view the actual census pages online, so why would you play with > those disks? > > The only problem with the online images is that they are indexed using the > Mormon index. > Thus if there is an error in the index, it is also carried over to the > Collections Canada site. > > Even so, to my mind, when one wants to look at the census, isn't looking at > the original pages better?