Let us all close our eyes and take a breath: The End of the Microfilm Lending Program


Let us not panic.  OK?


The LDS Church, through it's Family Search web site has announced that its long standing microfilm lending program is coming to an end.  The final ship out date is August 31, 2017. Requests for films and orders received after that date will not be fulfilled.

Family Search estimates that the remainder of its rolls that have not been transitioned to electronic images should be complete sometime in 2020.

Many genealogical web sites have reprinted the press release, so I am not going to do that here, but the links are at the bottom of this post.

What I am going to do is try and explain why I think this is being done now, and why this is for the best.

First of all, the most important collections to the great number of people are online, free for you to access right now.  www.familysearch.org is an amazing resource.

What hasn't been put online is everything else that have.  Because getting a confident answer from anyone inside the LDS organization is difficult at best, my feelings are that the films that have not been digitized are smaller collections of films and films that have a more limited impact to the general audience of users.  These may include overseas collections, but they do not include the larger collections - such as Ohio Death Certificates, 1908-1953, which are online.

So why 2020?  Why three years?  Why do they need to stop fulfilling requests?

The easiest way to make sense of this is that big projects, require a big push.  This is that big push.

Just as one cannot throw together a gala charity ball for a cause with 1,000 people on the guest list in a month, and have everything run smoothly, an event of that size takes time to plan - sometimes two or three years out.  In the case of the gala, you have to find and secure the location, sign contracts, audition the talent, pay for the rentals of the chairs, select the menu, find a replacement for the entertainer who has backed out because they are going to open an ashram, etc. and so on, and I could go on listing everything.

Or, put another way, you just don't make a baby tonight and expect it to be born tomorrow and a fully functioning adult the day after.  These things take time.

Right?

Well, this is kinda what is going on with the films in their conversion.  It times time, money, manpower and planning. So this is what I think are of things that have to be taken into consideration:

1) Ensuring that all of the outstanding film in a series is returned, and on hand so nothing gets missed.
2) Scheduling the production time so each set can be run through the scanners, mistakes caught, images re-scanned because of film or technical difficulties.
3) Cataloging the digital images, and then indexing them.
4) Building in time for mistakes that will be made, film repair, prepping the film, re-boxing the masters and storing them, pulling the next set, and so forth.
5) Meeting budget items, which includes the delivery of equipment if needed, setting up the teams, verifying the work, etc.
6) Verifying rights licenses, and in some cases, renegotiating them.

And all of this has to run on schedule.  I am sure that there are multiple teams are going to running capacity.  Not only that, but new projects of digitized images will also be arriving concurrently as these films are being transferred.

If you are impacted, you are not alone.  I know that three years seems like a lifetime.  And in some cases, for some people, they may not be here in three years.

But the longer this is put off, the more in jeopardy these filmed records become, especially if they are only copies.

And there are some collections, like the actual digital Ohio Death Certificates from 1954 to 1963 that won't be brought online anytime soon because the holding institutions see them as profit centers (Yes, I am talking about the Ohio History Connection) for the short term.

There is one bit of good news.  My understanding is that most of these collections are going be released during the three period and beyond.  Holding off all of this only to release it at once would result in what my father used to a call a "cluster".  Remember when the 1940 census came out what happened?  So it is smart to stagger the releases of these films images online.

But again, trying to get a firm response out of Family Search can be as difficult as getting them to make a correction on a blatant indexing mistake.  Don't get me started.

Now, the announcement was made a couple days ago, it was revised today and I suspect that dates could change because that's what happens in these types of big projects.

So here are the links that you will need:

Family History Microfilm Discontinuation announced by LDS Church.

Frequently Asked Questions regarding the termination of the program.

Contact Family Search for specific questions now, not at the last minute.

I hope this helps.  It is a far more complex issue than just terminating the service.  In the end, the results will be wonderful, handy and very easy to obtain.

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