Council of State Archivists
May 10, 2007
I have recently been working with other state archivists and their staff on the issue of providing online access to primary resources. Many states have been approached by vendors (Ancestry.com, iArchives and Genealogical Society of Utah to name a few) interested in developing a business relationship to provide online access to original documents. The Council of State Archivists created a task force, the Online Content Providers Task Force, to deal with the issues surrounding such relationships. The result is a statement of intent, guidelines and issues to consider while working on any digitization project. You may access the online statement at: www.statearchivists.org
If you have any questions about the statement please contact me directly at the Archives of Michigan.
January 15, 2008 at 6:23 pm
As an avid genealogist I am very interested to see how the task force is progressing towards making original documents available online through the library or a company such as Ancestry.
January 15, 2008 at 8:59 pm
We should have some exciting news about this in the next couple months.
February 10, 2008 at 5:25 pm
I, too, am very interested in having digital records available but am concerned about having to subscribe to a specific service since I feel our taxes support the State Archives. I would be upset if I were not be able to view the records when I go to Lansing because of some agreement with a commercial company.
Look what happened to the Catholic Church records at the Burton Collection at the main Detroit Public Library. They are supposed to be available to the general public, with some limitations on the dates, according to what I was told by the former archivist at the Archdiocese, yet, as a non-resident of Detroit, I have to pay $10.00 each time I visit and use the microfilms.
Rather than someone like Ancestry, has the State ever been approached by the Mormon Church?