I thought I'd add to the (short) debate about the merits of purchasing census CDs versus online (or other) indexes by describing a recent experience of mine with both of these. I must start by saying that I don't often get the chance to visit the FRC in London to look at street indexes and census records which is why I tend to purchase the census CD sets to research at my leisure. However, if I could get to there often I would use the methods described below for my searches through census records at the FRC. I recently purchased a CD set for which there exists a complete index online. I searched the online index for references to two surnames I'm interested in HOOLE and VOUSLEY. I was unable to locate any of the people I was interested in on these indexes. VOUSLEY is an uncommon name so I had expected this to be mistranscribed but I thought I'd be OK with HOOLE (note my search was for all names beginning with HOOL so I'd pick up the obvious errors). A little disheartened I turned to my CDs and searched the included street index for an address where my VOUSLEY ancestors lived near the census date and when straight to this address on the CDs. There was my VOUSLEY family, very clearly written. Next, I looked up an address in the City of London where I'd found some HOOLE baptisms that I'm trying to link to my Woolwich HOOLEs and searched the whole of this street. No HOOLEs. So I broadened my search to the whole parish and discovered a street that I'd found a reference to in one of my Woolwich HOOLE wills but I'd been unable to locate the address in Woolwich. The address is Bloomfield Street, which I don't think is a common street name and the will mentioned the Bloomfield Street Savings Bank so I'm hoping this is something I can follow up which will maybe link the two HOOLE families together. If I hadn't trawled the whole parish (which isn't possible with online indexes) I wouldn't have found this address. Don't get me wrong I do think that the online indexes are very useful to quickly help locate surnames but they have their limitations. I think census CDs (or microfilms) and indexes (online or book form) complement each other and are both useful in different situations and I hope that the computerisation of both continue. Sorry for the long rambling but I hope I've illustrated my point. Regards Alison