hOW DO WE DISPOSE OF THE FILM AND FISCHE READERS?
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I found this article @SandraKingore SandraKingore not sure if it is much help for you? https://www.churchofjesuschrist.org/bc/content/ldsorg/callings/temple-and-family-history/family-history-center-director/PD10048360_000-FHC-Operations-USCAN.pdf What I found is on page 23
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Is there a specific reason that you would want to dispose of the microfilim and fische readers? If you still have films and fische you may still want to retain them, not all films and fische have been indexed or uploaded to FamilySearch. I have also referred this to the Family History Center Consultants Group @Family History Center Consultants as they may have some ideas.
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probably because they take up so much room and cant be used on ordered new items.
yeh it might be worth keeping one or two around - but not a full room of them
and are they even being maintained/fixed any more (funded by the church)??
they are probably just as much a nuiscance as anything else
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We went through our massive amount of films to see which ones are online. We ended up sending back to SL over 2700 films. There were still some remaining which we are fortunate to have, but the films we kept will need readers to view them. We kept 2 readers, but have several others stored in the Stake Center for parts to repair the readers we kept as there is no longer any other way to get parts. Our reader/printer's software is outdated and no longer useable with our computers, but it still is a great reader. We also went through our fiche and discarded the ones that are online. The bonus in doing this was we were able to get rid of 4 of our 5 film cabinets in our FHC and make more room for classes, patrons, etc.---which we will utilize when we reopen again!
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The problem with returning these now-online / digitized films is that FamilySearch might not always have the rights to display their contents on its website. In recent times, it has been noticed that many films we could once freely access online now either have restricted access (e.g. can only be viewed at a Family History Centre) or can no longer be viewed on FamilySearch from wherever you are signed in.
Here in London, the Society of Genealogists happily took over 20,000 films from the London FHC at Kew, when it closed - it put them in a converted cloakroom! As long as you have the room (and working readers, of course!) I would advise you to hang on to these films, as they might prove to be a great alternative to patrons otherwise having to pay to see this material on commercial websites, or pay the record custodian for photocopies.
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Hi Paul,
I had not considered that the rights to view content might be revoked! That would be a concern. Too late for our FHC, but the majority of films we returned will always be online as they were things like census records etc. Before we returned each film, we looked at each individual item on each film using the catalog found on FamilySearch. There might have been 10 items on a film with 9 available online, 1 not available. We kept that film and any other like it.
If you had over 20,000 films, your FHC is obviously much bigger that the FHC in our Stake building. Wow! And the cloakroom must have been big as well!
Here in the United States we return our films to the Salt Lake FHL. We are given labels that let us mail them back to SL postage free. We are not allowed to donate any films to any library or society. I imagine they require that because of the agreements made with the original record custodians.
Thanks for your comment. I like hearing what others throughout the world do.
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I'm afraid I well-understated the figure I gave, Cindy! See https://www.noseygenealogist.com/blog/4749/lds-london-microfilm-moving-to-the-sog, which shows it was in fact around 57,000 films. BTW - The Society of Genealogists' premises is an Affiliate lbrary, with very close past ties with FamilySearch and the former Genealogical Society of Utah.
One point I should have clarified is that users (at the SOG Library) are not allowed to take copies from certain microfilms and have to sign an undertaking not to do so before being handed those particular films.
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