Rosalinda I was asking my FHC director today about that price increase
going into effect on the 15th and she said that is correct but she
understood it was for films that were send out on or after the 15th so
even if you order today the new price will effect those films as well.
And a related comment about the ScanStone project (thanks Josie for
your article):
Subject: [FHCNET] Digitization - The Scanstone Project
At the FGS convention, I believe, it was announced that the
"Scanstone Project was underway.
It is designed as hardware/software to improve the output and
throughput of the Granite Mountain Records Vault to convert our
microfilm collection to digital images.
Using it, a roll of microfilm is scanned in 6 minutes, then
rescanned in another 6 minutes.
Then these are audited in about 4 minutes, then converted to
digital images and compressed. This takes another 7-8 minutes. So a
roll of microfilm is completely converted within ½ hour.
The Church had 10 scanners in operation on 1 Sept 2005, 3
audit stations, 10 compressors and 10 terabytes of storage. (The total
book collection in the Library of Congress is 20 terabytes of text)
What took 6 people to do in September now requires only 2
people. The Church stated that they expected a 300% increase by the end
of 2005, with plans to increase the number of scanners to 25 by year's
end. (This may be part of the increase in costs)
The capabilities of the system were/are:
3 million images in Sept - Over 12 million images per month now.
Approx. 100 rolls of film in Sept - to 370,000 rolls per year
when they complete the installation of the 25 scanners. Within 6 years
the entire Granite Mountain Records Vault collection should be
completely digitized.
Published family histories are now being digitized,
beginning with those that are out of copyright. About 5,000 were
on-line at BYU as of 1 Sept. Approximately 100 volumes of this
material is being digitized per week.
The URL for this material is www.lib.byu.edu
Hope this helps clear up some of the confusion.
Robert Vann
Josie T. Trevino wrote:
This is a must read and some exciting news........Very interesting!
Josie in San Antonio
-----------------------------------------
LDS to put microfilm in vaults on Internet
-----------------------------------------
Huge effort planned to index family history data
By Carrie A. Moore, Deseret Morning News
Ever wonder what's inside those secured vaults, owned by the LDS
Church, positioned high inside the granite walls of Little Cottonwood
Canyon?
The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints is working toward
allowing anyone with Internet access to learn more than they've ever
known before about the information contained on 2 million-plus rolls of
microfilm housed there. Currently,
the church is compiling searchable indexes to that information and will
eventually make it available for free through an automated database on
the Internet.
The church excavated the vaults containing those records on property it
purchased in the 1960s, providing a safe repository during the height
of the Cold War for birth, marriage, death and census information it
considers essential for the salvation of mankind after death. Now
church leaders seek to make the information more readily available to
the world.
"The goal is to create (Internet-accessible) indexes to all the films
we have in the vault. That's a long-term process and that's a lot of
films,"
according to Paul Nauta, manager of public affairs for church's
FamilySearch.org Web site.
"We've not announced when people will begin to start seeing the indexes."
Those attending the annual Federation of Genealogical Societies'
conference this week at the Salt Palace will get a "sneak preview" of
the church's plans. As the project progresses over time, indexes to
records from 110 nations previously stored on microfilm will become
accessible to virtually anyone, anywhere, through the Internet via the
touch of a few keystrokes.
"We're showing people how we'll be creating indexes from those films. Sometime in the future we'll ask
people to help us create the indexes and make them publicly available,
and little by little we'll start to index the films from the vault like
we did with the 1880 (U.S.) Census.
"The challenge now is it takes a lot of people and a lot of time" to
create such an index. "Currently, you have to look at images on paper
or
burn them on a CD and distribute those to index the data. We're moving
the whole process to the Internet and this is a prototype of what that
might look like. . . . That's what the biggest buzz is at the
conference."
Conference attendees are using a lab at the Salt Palace equipped with a
number of computers to demonstrate the new automated database. The
microfilm information includes birth, marriage, death and census
records.
New advances in indexing software utilities and applications mean the
LDS Church "now has the ability to produce lots of indexes faster,"
than it did with previous databases it has digitized, including the
1880 U.S. Census. Making that database available online was a 12-year
project, using tens of thousands of volunteers.
In the future, the new technology "will provide automated indexing" for
an ever-increasing number of microfilms "so people can readily search
it from their homes."
As the number of family history researchers continues to grow -- one
study showed 40 percent of Americans have done research on their family
history and another said 90 percent have expressed interest -- demand
for online indexes that simplify searching for ancestors has soared, he
said.
How much time will it take to digitize all the films in the vault?
"Let's put it this way, it will depend on how much volunteer help we
get," Nauta said. "I think we can digitize the films to be indexed to
stay up with demand, but much will depend on how many volunteers we can
generate worldwide to index their records of interest. If, in a couple
of years, we could get a million indexers worldwide, we could put a big
dent" in the massive undertaking.
The indexing demonstration and other planned improvements to the
popular FamilySearch.org Web site are drawing standing-room-only crowds
at the convention. The changes "will make great strides to simplify and
increase the success of the family history experience," he said.
Just when the first indexed information from the microfilms will become
available online has not yet been announced. "We don't want to be
swamped with people before we're ready to handle it," Nauta said.
The new developments won't make more than 5,000 small family history
centers housed in LDS chapels worldwide obsolete. Previously, those
looking for information contained on the microfilms stored in the
church's Granite Mountain Records Vault had to request that copies of
information on the films be sent to their
local center. At some point in the future, that likely won't be
necessary any longer, he said, but "that will continue to be a role for
a long time.
"Family history centers will continue to be a mainstay" for accessing
information on the microfilms for some time to come.
As more of those records become digitized and indexes become available,
the role of the local centers, he said, "will probably change. Some
people have no Internet access, and they'll use them for that. The role
of the family history centers will evolve over time to help people get
started" with their research because "many people don't know how to do
that. They will become more fundamental to help people get and stay
organized, and to answer questions they have doing their research."
Many of those in town to attend the conference are also making use of
the church's renowned Family History Library, less than a block from
the Salt Palace. Hours have been extended to accommodate guests, with
the library open from 8 a.m. to 10:30 p.m. through Saturday.
"It's an exciting time for family history," Nauta said. "Those just
developing this kind of research as a hobby will never have any
appreciation for how far this industry has evolved, even in the past 10
years."
--
 |
|
by Date 
-