Help Searching Your Files In Time of Crisis

LegacyUser

MEL said: Since we are all on lock and the library's are closed, any chance you would allow access to your on lin files that we can only see from your affiliated library's and your church sites. Here in Illinois all public places are close till the end of April.

Mel MELGEN63@aol.com Thank You

LegacyUser

A van Helsdingen said: This question has been asked many times. There is now a banner at the top of some pages of the FS website that explains that because of contracts with record custodians and commercial partners, these restrictions cannot be lifted without the consent of these organisations.

FS would need to sign temporary contracts with record custodians in order to be able to relax restrictions during the pandemic. This might be possible for a few large record sets- e.g. UK censuses, but it would take years of negotiations to do this for all records that can only be viewed at FHCs and/or Affiliate Libraries. Last week Ancestry.com made a deal with the US National Archives that means 500 million records are now free during the pandemic, so there is hope that FS could something similar.

Last week the Internet Archive did a similar thing to what you are asking FS to do when they made many digital books and literature available for free until the end of the pandemic. Immediately, the authors and copyright owners angrily objected to their property rights being violated. The Internet Archive could face lawsuits and huge financial losses as a result of this decision. FS would face similar consequences if they made records only accessible at FHCs/ALs available to everyone at home without the permission of record owners.

LegacyUser

joe martel said: This is the current official statement: https://www.familysearch.org/help/salesforce/viewArticle?urlname=Expanded-access-to-records-restricted-to-centers-and-libraries-due-to-COVID-19&lang=en