Archive Record Access

Archive Record Access

To the US State and Federal Archives

We of the family history online community support free online access to those records which your archives hold and which we need for research of our family ancestors. This includes, but is not limited to, such records as Wills, Deeds and Tax lists from the 1600s, 1700s and 1800s.

You have been entrusted with documents that date back to the beginning of this country. You do not own these records but they are public documents, long since being added to the public domain. Many documents date from the 1600s.

Many of you, in particular Virginia and now Maryland, charge outrageous prices to duplicate microfilm for private individuals i.e. $40.00 to $50.00/ roll and in the majority of cases it is the elderly of our community that is doing this research and have limited resources or are living on fixed incomes. You have failed to put even the indexes to such records online, although when we wish to order an individual document you demand that we give you a specific site and inform us you do not do research or you charge even more outrageous fees to do a reference look up.

Many Archives charge a *surcharge*, a $10.00 to $20.00 dollar charge, to out of state researchers, in particular Virginia and South Carolina or tell us we are free to come to the archive to do research. In some cases a $2.00 documents now costs, $12.00 or $22.00. And just exactly how does one afford to go all the way from say California to say Virginia and do research? Most of us would have to stay in Virginia for several years.

In some cases, you don't even make records available, in particular, Ohio, Illinois and Indiana. With all do respect to the Mormon collection, many people are not members of the Mormon church and prefer not to support that particular church by using their facility, in many instances there is a charge for bringing film from Salt Lake City to your local area.

Those people who live in rural areas are just simply out of luck, they don't have access to a genealogy library much less original documents.

In most cases, the amount of published records is woefully inadequate for research purposes. The costs of books in or out of print are equally high priced.

In other cases, it is necessary to research thousands of records, hundreds of rolls of microfilm and half of the counties in a particular state before one can find a particular family. Some of us prefer to own the records either on microfilm or printed copies so that they can later be donated to libraries in our local area. In many cases, societies such as the Sons and Daughters of the American Revolution now require copies of original documents. Transcribed records are known to contain errors and without the original document to compare, one never knows whether the transcription is correct or not. This results in much confusion among family lines, not to mention, incorrect connections.

Some archives, in particular, Pennsylvania and Georgia require you request permission from some third party i.e. the county Clerk for probate records and county deeds. That permission is not always given, so many of us hit brick walls in our research.

As to the Federal Archive, youve digitized the index to the Native American Rolls and put them online and then charge an outrageous fee for the documents. Scan the Dawes and Miller roll packets and put them online. This applies equally as well to military records including but not limited to, American Revolution War, War of 1812 and Civil War.

Try as we might to make records available on a private level, the costs are becoming prohibitive.

All of these practices discourage and prevent family history research.

THEREFORE, we urge you to use the Virginia State Librarys Digital collection as a model and we further urge you to make scanned documents which you hold in your facilities available to the public either free via the internet or at the very least digitize them for CD sales.