Why are so many records available only in SLC?
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What part of the world or what types of records are you working with that you get the impression that it's "the majority of the records"? It is very, very far from the majority, in my experience. Knock on wood, but in my current multi-day rabbit hole (several mixed Lutheran and Roman Catholic marriages in mid-1800s Budapest), I have yet to encounter a single film reel in the Catalog.
When I have encounterered film reels, it has always been due to FS's all-or-nothing method of enforcing privacy restrictions: the microfilm (or rather, its digital descendant, the image group) included some records that were too recent to be made public by publishing online.
The other common reason for film reels is contract restrictions: the record custodian did not wish the records to be made public. This can be due to many different reasons, such as copyrights or paywalls. Like privacy laws, such contracts are largely out of FS's control.
We have been told that they are working on breaking up image groups so that any non-restricted parts can be put online, but FS has an incomprehensibly-huge collection of records, so it's not surprising to me that I have not yet seen such a divvied-up image group.
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@Caryl Mod note: For your privacy, your post was edited to remove a name that is not part of your username. Please see the Community Code of Conduct if you have questions.
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