View All Films and Databases online without restriction

LegacyUser

John Davis said: At a time when virtually every segment of society is being encouraged to shelter at home and avoid groups or sharing of common spaces, it would seem to be appropriate to remove restrictions on certain of your films or databases that insist they must be viewed at Family History Centers. For example, many of the DC databases cannot be viewed online at home. I continually run into films that can only be viewed at a Family History Center. Recommend you reconsider this restriction.

LegacyUser

Brett said: John

Please refer to the following post in this Forum, of 7 Days ago, by "FamilySearch" ...

Requests for access to records during temporary closings
https://getsatisfaction.com/familysea...

Quote:
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Thank you for your inquiry and suggestion. We have had several requests in this regard as a result of the temporary closing of our Family History Library and family history centers due to COVID-19 precautions. Due to contractual obligations, we unfortunately cannot offer expanded external access to records restricted to family history centers and affiliate libraries. We apologize for this inconvenience.

In the meantime, we encourage you to explore the vast record collections that are available on FamilySearch. Millions of new indexed records and images are added weekly. And if you haven’t used our new Explore Historical Images tools, you might be surprised at the potential discoveries you can make in our growing unindexed image collections.

We appreciate your patience, loyalty, and support,

FamilySearch Support
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And, also the "Banner" at the TOP of the "Search/Records" in "FamilySearch":



I know that this does not help; but, I hope it puts things in perspective ...

Brett

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LegacyUser

A van Helsdingen said: Like Brett says, FS does not restrict records for no reason. They only restrict records due to contracts between them and record owners or commercial partners. Many record owners do not want their records on FS when they are initially approached by FS, but FS might be able to negotiate limited access, which usually means either having to go to a FHC or Affiliate Library, having to be a member of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter Day Saints to view the records, only the index being available, or not being able to download images of records.

It might be possible for FS to negotiate temporary relaxing of the restrictions with a few record custodians of larger record sets (e.g. the UK and Scotland archives). For example, last week Ancestry announced a deal with the US National Archives (NARA) which sees 500 million records become available for free at Ancestry until the lockdowns are over.