[Genealib] Discontinued Access to Ancestry.com Databases -Follow-up

Mon Mar 19 14:38:52 EDT 2007

Well, sort of. The first posts on this were from the letter sent by the Church to the Family History Centers; Leland Meitzer posted it on his GenealogyBlog: http://blog.dearmyrtle.com/2007/03/ancestry-to-cut-access-through-fhcs.html. He followed up with an inside letter from The Generations Network to Ancestry.com staff; see  http://genealogyblog.com/ancestrycom/another-side-of-the-ancestrycom-removal-from-the-family-history-centers-5877.

DearMyrtle has some comments from FHC coordinators at http://blog.dearmyrtle.com/2007/03/ancestry-to-cut-access-through-fhcs.html

My gut feeling is that TGN wanted the Church to license the product on behalf of the Family History Centers, either through ProQuest's Ancestry LibraryEdition or a similar model, and that it was cost-prohibitive to do so, especially when FamilySearch is already investing resources in digitizing and indexing content to provide truly free public access (see http://genealogy.about.com/b/a/253614.htm and http://genealogy.about.com/b/a/201217.htm -- though I did see a comment somewhere, though I can't find it now, to the effect of "why does LDS want to waste time re-indexing the census?"). 

TGN refers repeatedly to "free" access, but of course we know that libraries pay significant fees. A couple of the comments on Eastman's post point this out, as well.

Danielle Cunniff Plumer, Coordinator
Texas Heritage Digitization Initiative
Texas State Library and Archives Commission
512.463.5852 (phone) / 512.936.2306 (fax)
dplumer at tsl.state.tx.us 

-----Original Message-----
From: genealib-bounces at mailman.acomp.usf.edu [mailto:genealib-bounces at mailman.acomp.usf.edu]On Behalf Of Lyn Meehan
Sent: Monday, March 19, 2007 12:17 PM
To: Librarians Serving Genealogists
Subject: RE: [Genealib] Discontinued Access to Ancestry.com Databases -Follow-up

Has anyone read anything in defense of The Church? Have they posted a comment? 

Please Read Dick Eastman's Online Genealogy Newsletter

"Ancestry.com Terminates Free Access to Family History Centers"
http://blog.eogn.com/eastmans_online_genealogy/2007/03/ancestrycom_ter.html

Thanks,

Lyn Meehan
Information Service Division
Edmonton Public Library

  _____  

From: genealib-bounces at mailman.acomp.usf.edu on behalf of Karen Stanley
Sent: Sat 3/17/2007 5:34 PM
To: Librarians Serving Genealogists
Subject: Re: [Genealib] Discontinued Access to Ancestry.com Databases -Follow-up

Joy, thank you for sharing both sides of the story.  I am particularly bemused by the FHL's decision to respond to this situation by directing their volunteer indexers to focus attention on producing yet another census index.  Why?  So that "free" access to indexes will be ensured.

There is no such thing as a free index.  Even if the indexers are volunteers, there are costs to coordinating an indexing project, and there are also opportunity costs in duplicating work already done by somebody else.  Every hour spent by a volunteer on indexing a given source is an hour that could have been spent on a different project.  Only a fraction of the records in the FHL have been indexed, and if volunteers are directed to needless census indexing, a wealth of immigration, probate, and vital records will remain indexless for several years longer.

Today's genealogists now have access to multiple census indexes and census images which are readily available either free through public libraries or at a reasonable cost through private subscription.  The only major gap remaining in census indexing is to transcribe and scan the handwritten Soundex cards, which remain an important alternative where illegible census microfilm led to inaccurate indexing.  

Regards,
Karen Stanley
Houston, TX

Joy Rich <joyrichny at earthlink.net> wrote:

This was posted on today's Genealogy Blog at
http://genealogyblog.com/ancestrycom/another-side-of-the-ancestrycom-removal-from-the-family-history-centers-5877 .

Joy

Joy Rich
Chapter Representative, New York Metro Chapter
Association of Professional Genealogists
http://www.apgen.org
http://www.apgen.org/chapters/newyork/index.html

--------------------------------------------------------------------------

Another Side of the Ancestry.com Removal From the Family History Centers

> EMail This Post < | by Leland Meitzler | > permalink | 3/17/2007 |

Yesterday I posted the announcement about the removal of "free" Ancestry.com from the
Family History Centers. I've now received a copy of communication written by The
Generations Network CEO Tim Sullivan, to Ancestry employees. Keep in mind that there are
two sides to every issue - so I think it's fair to make this post.

Although I personally don't profit in the slightest from the success of Ancestry.com, I am
big supporter of what they do for the genealogical community. I believe that although
their product isn't inexpensive, it's a tremendous value for any genealogist. Their
continual addition of new digital data (case in point - The Iowa State
Censuses!) - as well as indexes makes a real difference to genealogists. That said, you
can see that I'm probably a tiny bit prejudice. I know that sometimes coming to agreements
that work for all parties is hard - if not impossible.

Mr. Sullivan's letter follows:

From: Tim Sullivan
Sent: Thursday, March 15, 2007 4:38 PM
To: FYI ALL
Subject: Update

I also wanted to share a few thoughts with all
of you on another topic. For the last seven years,
our company has provided free access to
Ancestry.com inside the family history centers of
the LDS Church. During this time, we've done this
without any formal agreement or compensation.
Several months ago, we informed the Church of our
desire to craft a formal relationship that would
allow us to continue providing this free access.
This is similar to the way that we license
Ancestry.com to over 1400 public libraries in the
U.S. and U.K. We do this for a license fee which
lets patrons of these institutions use our service
for free inside their facilities. As you can
imagine, this is a very popular program among
libraries.

Unfortunately, we were not able to come to
agreement with the Church on the terms of this
proposed relationship. We are disappointed by
this, as we know that patrons of family history
centers value Ancestry.com, and we think our
institutional licensing program is priced very
fairly. We remain willing and eager to have
Ancestry.com available in family history centers,
and we are even hopeful that at some point the
Church will reconsider their position and decide
to give patrons of their family history centers
access to the world's greatest online resource for
family history research.

We will continue to provide access in family
history centers to a small number of databases
which are covered by other agreements, and none of
our other many agreements with the Church are
impacted by this change. We continue to have a
number of mutually beneficial agreements and
relationships with the Church, and as two large
players in the family history space, we share a
common goal of getting as many people as we can
interested in their family history. Our
relationship is a good one, and we are always
looking for ways to cooperate with the Church in
order to grow our business and ignite more
interest in the category. I'm sharing all of this
with all of you because I am sure that there will
be some unhappy patrons of family history centers,
and I wanted everyone to understand that this was
not a one-way decision on our part.

Finally, I am constantly asked whether we think
of the Church as a competitor. The answer to this
really depends on the underlying assumptions of
the question. Are we competing for dollars? No. Do
we have exactly the same goals? No. Are we
unfriendly? Absolutely not. Is TGN committed to
making sure that Ancestry.com remains the #1
resource for online family history? Absolutely. Is
Ancestry going to continue to be the home of the
world's largest online family tree? Yup. Should we
be able to innovate faster than anyone on the
planet in this space? Of course. Are we two large
players that each have done tremendous things to
help people understand their family history? Yes.
Can we continue to cooperate with the Church to
get millions more people interested in family
history? We can, and we will.

I think we have a pretty good game plan for
continuing to grow a truly great company.

Thanks,

Tim

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