Kelly: Sometimes pages of the electronic versions are "enhanced" and may be more readable than the NARA microfilm. I have been especially pleased with the 1910 census in an electronic version for that reason, where the microfilm was faint and illegible, and the electronic is readable. When I was helping someone in July decipher a name, we found the Heritage Quest and Ancestry electronic versions were very different. For the same census page, the top half of Heritage Quest's was too faint, and the bottom half about right; the top half of Ancestry's was readable, and much of the bottom half was black. Thus between the two electronic versions we had a readable page (aside from the fact the handwriting was lousy to begin with). Seattle Public Library has some patron-donated "Old Series" census microfilms for the mid 1800s. There were so many complaints when those first came out that they were refilmed by NARA. The "New Series," or current film, is available at the NARA Branch in Seattle. Usually if something is unreadable on the "Old Series" (so labelled on the cabinet), the microfilm at the NARA Branch is readable. Some states have manuscript copies of some of their Federal censuses. These may or may not read the same as the one in NARA (handwritten copyist errors in one or the other or both). The census takers' original notes did not survive. See the NARA ARC web site if you don't get all the answers you need on this list: <http://www.archives.gov/research_room/arc/index.html> --Ida Skarson McCormick, idamc@seanet.com, Seattle At 11:04 PM 11/03/2003 -0800, "Kelly McAllister" <mcallisters4@comcast.net> wrote: >It's great to be able to find microfilms with federal census pages in so >many libraries and on the internet. I suppose it's only sensible that they >are all copies from the same master copy that was laboriously created by >some poor sole slaving over some kind of scanner. Unfortunately, when you >find the the bottom 4 lines on a particular page are almost black, where do >you go try to find a readable copy? Some deep dark archive of the federal >government in Washington D.C.?