How to access early Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saint branch membership records

Pat Lowe

How to access early Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saint branch membership records now? Since all microfilms have been digitized I assumed they would be available but I can only find the indexed version as a whole collection. The images for a specific place says to be used in Family Search Library in Salt Lake City only. Is this just temporary until the project is finished?

Is there a project going to make the digital images available like all other English parish registers? I would volunteer to work on this project as a missionary or whatever it takes.

Thanks

RobertLeighPritchett

JanaLee McBride has a handout on "Tracing the Saints". I have the PDF handout from her webinar, but this system does not allow PDF attachments. Lots of links included.

Her excellent webinar was 2 November 2023 https://www.familysearch.org/en/library/classes

Well whadayaknow, I found it online >

https://www.familysearch.org/en/wiki/img_auth.php/a/ae/Tracing_the_Saints_Handout.pdf

Marcia Berkey

@RobertLeighPritchett Thank you for sharing these great resources and the pdf downloaded perfectly.

Pat Lowe

I do appreciate the link to the handout Tracing the Saints. but it implies that all of those early records of the branches of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints have been digitized and are available. But this is not the case.

For example, the Irchester, Northamptonshire, England branch records are on Digital 4484217. But when I find that # in the cataog, it is only available in SLC FS Library. We used to be able to circulate them to the various FS centers. but now they are only available in SLC? Why were they digitized at all if not to give these records a wider availability?

Can anyone with specific knowledge of this collection please answer my question. When will this collection of early LDS branch records be availabe online or at least at the FS Centers.

RobertLeighPritchett

Pat Lowe, what a great question! I am too far away to use the SLC FS Center. Once again, just because everything is now "digitized", does not mean it is "accessible".

I would like a note placed on catalog items that used to be available, but are no longer accessible with a reason why they have been sidelined and whether or not they will ever be coming back online.

N Tychonievich

https://history.churchofjesuschrist.org/?lang=eng

@Pat Lowe

There is a record collection titled The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints, Records of Members (Worldwide), 1836-1970. The collection description states: "The index is viewable on FamilySearch and the images will be viewable on the Church History Library's website."

I note the "will be", so I have no idea whether the images are available at the Church History site yet or not. But it might be worth checking. (Looks like the link popped to the top of my message).

Pat Lowe

That is the collection that I am referring to. All extant early branch records were microfilmed 50+ years ago and were available for all this time. Recently these same records were digitized into "Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints, Records of Members (Worldwide), 1836-1970" BUT, the the images are not now viewable/available. I would like to know why not? What was the point of digitizing them if not to make them viewable?