At the Saturday Afternoon (April 4th) Session of the semiannual General Conference of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints, Elder Russell M. Nelson announced the release of a new compact disk called the Family History SourceGuide. It is available at the LDS Distribution Center and should soon be available at all Family History Centers. The CD is intended to help beginning researchers determine what records would be most likely to assist them in compiling a family record from a particular area of the world and for a particular time period. Historical maps are included, as well as sample query letters for various situations.
Elder Nelson also announced that other record collections would soon become available, notable the 1881 census of England on CD and the 1880 U.S. Census. An additional set of records that will be following is a list of immigrants arriving at Ellis Island.
A Vital Records index currently planned will index about 25 million records. This will probably released country by country as it becomes available. It is estimated that the British Isles will index 5 million records and the U.S. Index will include 4.5 million records. These records are made available through the volunteer extraction program, carried out through LDS church members and other genealogists and friends.
Here's part of a press release issued by the church: "For the first time since its establishment more than 100 years ago, the premier institution on genealogy the Family History Department of The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints will make some of its valuable knowledge and data available to the public on compact disc for home use. The new products are part of a plan to simplify genealogical research, making it faster and easier to access vital information and resources. This "opening of the library doors" will begin in April 1998 with the release of a new software program, the Family History SourceGuide, and two new resource files on CD: the 1851 British Census Records (three counties), and the Australian Vital Records Index (1788-1905).
Here are some additional comments from Don Snow:
You Users groupies may be interested in the following. Elder Russell Nelson of the Q of 12 was the last speaker in the afternoon session of General Conference an hour ago and talked about FH. In particular he talked about, and they showed on screen, one of the new CDs the Church has put out called "FH SourceGuide." He said it includes info by country of sources, maps, translations of genealogy letters and terms, and other helps. I had my daughter in SLC go to the Distribution Center before they closed at 4:30 pm and buy me one. I haven't seen it yet, but she called from the Distribution Center a few minutes ago to say it requires Windows 95 or NT 4.0+, a Pentium processor, 8 megs of RAM minimum (16 megs recommended), 30 megs hard drive space, and costs $20.
She also bought me a copy of the new CD the Church released of the FH Resource File, 1851 British Census (Devon, Norfolk, and Warwick) for $5, and it requires Windows 3.1 or better, and 4 megs of RAM. They will be releasing more of the British Census CDs later. She said they are planning on releasing the Vital Records CD in a couple of weeks, and that's probably the one Elder Nelson talked about when he mentioned Ellis Island immigration records and other records that Church members have been extracting for indexing.
The biggest disadvantage of the SourceGuide seems to be its high-end hardware requirements, and it will be a strong argument for updating the computers in many small Stake-house Family History Centers where experienced researchers are in short supply. As we learn more about these new offerings we will try to keep the users group posted.
We invite your feedback. Would you like to have a break-out session on these? If you purchase or use these products, would you consider writing us a paragraph (or a page) on your experiences?
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