Photos of WW2 Draft Registration Cards unavailable

LegacyUser

Alahärmä said: Something has happended. I cannot access the photos of the WWII registration cards anymore.

https://www.familysearch.org/ark:/619...

LegacyUser

Don M Thomas said: I know they are different collections Tom. The U.S. typed Military Records are replacing the U.S. Original Document Military Records in familysearch.org. Why?

LegacyUser

Tom Huber said: I have never found that to be the situation, Don. If you want to know the why, then you should probably call the Contact Us number and ask to speak with someone familiar with the situation.

LegacyUser

Don M Thomas said: You have never worked with World War II Draft Registration Cards as much as I have. I have been going after U S military records in the males in my ancestry, and a lot of other peoples ancestries that I no longer do. I have noticed that there are more and more typed documents of military records and less and less of ORIGINAL actual documents at familysearch. org I have had to go to Fold3.com and ancestry.com to get most of the Military records. All U.S. World War I & II Draft Registration Cards should be here at familysearch.org - NOT JUST SOME.

LegacyUser

Don M Thomas said: You have never worked with U.S. World War I & II Draft Registration Cards as much as I have. I have been going after U S military records in the males in my ancestry, and a lot of other peoples ancestries that I no longer do. I have noticed that there are more and more typed documents of military records and less and less of ORIGINAL actual documents at familysearch. org. I have had to go to Fold3.com and ancestry.com to get most of the Military records. All U.S. World War I & II Draft Registration Cards should be here at familysearch.org - NOT JUST SOME.

LegacyUser

Tom Huber said: Wrong, Don, I have definitely worked with them, but mostly from other sites, since FamilySearch has lagged behind in providing them.

LegacyUser

Tom Huber said: Evidently you are not aware that there is no way that FamilySearch is or can become the be-all of all historical documents.

Only a small percentage of the world's records have ever been filmed, much less digitized, by FamilySearch and its predecessor, the Genealogical Society of Utah

LegacyUser

A van Helsdingen said: It would be very helpful if a FS Staff member could respond to these questions:

1. Is FS supposed to have all the WW1 and WW2 Draft Registration Cards? Is the digitizing ongoing? Have some been removed recently?
2. Are the Latter Day Saint only restrictions on the WW2 cards intended or accidental?

LegacyUser

Don M Thomas said: Funny how Fold3.com and ancestry.com have filmed all the U.S., World War I & II Draft Registration Cards. If I can't find it at familysearch.org I have been able to find at Fold3.com or ancestry.com. Fold3.com is owned by ancestry.com. Having them at Fold3.com or ancestry.com does not help those non-LDS researchers.

LegacyUser

A van Helsdingen said: I should add: Only some of the WW2 cards have the LDS only restriction. That seems to suggest it is accidental (or does each state have the right to set different restrictions? ). However it is frustrating that this issue has been reported for months on this forum without much response from staff, yet alone a fix to the problem.

LegacyUser

Don M Thomas said: Don't hold your breath A Van Helsdingen.

LegacyUser

A van Helsdingen said: The US Federal Censuses are also held by NARA and are also at Ancestry.com. But the images are free to all on FamilySearch. The same should apply to all other documents from NARA, unless they negotiated separate conditions for each collection (there is no obvious reason why they would do that)

LegacyUser

A van Helsdingen said: The NARA-FS contract makes no mention of seperate conditions for seperate collections, as far as I can tell: https://www.archives.gov/files/digiti...

LegacyUser

MaureenE said: The record set mentioned in the original post is DGS 004683501, which is from the
collection "Michigan Selective Service System registration cards [World War II] : fourth registration" names Hyde, Ernest Birdel - Jackman, Howard J.
https://www.familysearch.org/search/c... (scroll down)
All the records show a camera icon, meaning the images are viewable.

I would try using the Errors? button at the bottom go the catalogue entry page complaining that the catalogue page shows the records to be viewable, but the film message shows the message ( for a non LDS church member)
"To view these images do one of the following: You may be able to view this image by visiting one of our partners' sites or the legal record custodian (fees may apply)."
Ask that the viewing be fixed up.

Maybe the problem will be fixed, maybe not.

LegacyUser

A van Helsdingen said: I experienced the same problem, from a non-LDS account in New Zealand

LegacyUser

Don M Thomas said: I do have an LDS account and I am able to view on my home computer the Michigan Selective Service System World War II Draft Registration Cards.
https://www.familysearch.org/search/c...

FamilySearch might not be able to respond because of the partnership agreement between FamilySearch and ancestry.com

If it is the partnership agreement causing non-LDS to not have free access to certain familysearch.org records, it is a bad partnership agreement. Would have been better to have us all pay for ancestry.com, than to have ill feelings.

LegacyUser

Tom Huber said: The NARA has many collections of microfilms, with films numbering in the thousands. If you look though their site, organizations can purchase one or more films.

It is likely that FS has acquired only some of the collections, so the release of digitized images likely various with when a film was acquired.

FamilySearch has not been very consistent in the way they've handled distribution of NARA records. Citations are all over the map with some being very good and others are, well, disasters. Some effort has been demonstrated with some collections, but certainly not all of them.

Draft Registration for both World War 1 and World War 2, where not single registrations. There were four registrations for World War 2, the last being the "old man's draft registration."

World War 1 registrations also had several registration periods. Ancestry has an excellent description of the draft registration periods for both World War 1 and World War 2.

LegacyUser

Tom Huber said: FamilySearch needs to review each of the registration periods to make sure that they haven't inadvertently restricted some of the records. There should be no restrictions on any of the released registration periods.

This may be a case where the indexing was not done by FamilySearch volunteers, but was acquired by another organization and because of that, there may be a time-related period where the digitized images can be viewed on a (pay) site until that site has recouped its indexing costs.