Rootsireland links to NLI

pinkypinky

Claire Santry just posted about this:

http://www.irishgenealogynews.com/2015/11/rootsireland-marries-its-transcriptions.html

Well done to the IFHF for getting this done. It significantly enhances their site and makes €25 a month more palatable. I sense a subscription coming on soon.

Hermy

I wonder is their search function still as prohibitive as before?
This really needs to be improved.

Thomas from Presence

Search function is as bad as ever. The links to the microfilms are a minor convenience.

The design is much better but with deliberately hobbled search, RootsIreland deserves no major praise and will no doubt soon be challenged by transcriptions from the bigger sites.

L1011

Roots will continue to have the advantage of having access to the originals rather than sometimes very poor films; for some parishes. If its enough to charge that much for I don't know. It'd be damaging to lose their indices, though.

Hermy

L1011 wrote: »

Roots will continue to have the advantage of having access to the originals rather than sometimes very poor films; for some parishes. If its enough to charge that much for I don't know. It'd be damaging to lose their indices, though.

Roots only provide access to transcriptions.

L1011

Hermy wrote: »

Roots only provide access to transcriptions.

I meant they (sometimes) had access to the originals and hence have higher quality transcriptions than can be made from the films.

pinkypinky

As far as I know, in most cases, they were transcribed from the originals in each church, but for me the problem was that the people who did the transcription were not trained, and were using the material to learn typing. I've seen a lot of comments omitted from transcriptions were I could compare the original.

One of their big strengths though, is that their records go to 1920 in a lot of parishes, allowing easy access to mothers' maiden names on marriages and births. This is approx 40 years later than the NLI collection.

Hermy

With all their strengths though, they really could provide a great service.
The fact that they don't begs the question why?

Thomas from Presence

Hermy wrote: »

With all their strengths though, they really could provide a great service.
The fact that they don't begs the question why?

It's a singular lack of vision and understanding of the digital realm. I suspect it's backed up by a cynical assumption of perpetual monopoly.

So far it has worked. They've pulled outrageous sums from me personally but a multiple of it in hours.

It's not sustainable however.

pinkypinky

Well, don't forget that each of these county/part of county centres are independent groups, and they're not like a McDonalds franchise. Each would have been set up at different times with different standards. It's difficult to get them all to toe the same line. I'm not sure who coordinates it centrally - they're very faceless.

At the moment, they're providing something no one else is. Even if we get the rumoured FMP/Ancestry collaboration on another transcription of these records, theirs will only go to 1880/81. After the débâcle with the 1939 register in the UK, I'd be concerned they might decide to charge on top of subscriptions for this database too (although, they wouldn't have had the cost of scanning the records, just the transcription part onwards).

L1011

Ancestry usually use their volunteer transcription system which has the indexes for free as part of the deal with the transcribers (images are usually charged for, but in this case they'd be available elsewhere for free)

P. Breathnach

Thomas from Presence wrote: »

It's a singular lack of vision and understanding of the digital realm. I suspect it's backed up by a cynical assumption of perpetual monopoly....

One thing that has annoyed me greatly is the shifting of the goalposts from time to time. They have intentionally made it more difficult to perform certain kinds of free search, even though using free searches might lead somebody to subscribing. And some of their changes have caused me to lose the benefit of subscriptions that I have paid.

So now I am agin' 'em. I feel that they have treated me badly.

It looks to me as if there is a control freak influencing decisions, and I am fairly sure that I could name the person. [Don't worry mods: I won't test you by giving the name!]

tabbey

Pinkpinky states she is unsure who co-ordinates rootsireland. I was about to name her, until I saw that P.Breathnach indicated that this might be imprudent. I sometimes get annoyed with rootsireland, but I have always found the co-ordinator pleasant and helpful whenever I met or phoned her. It is hard to believe that it is almost a year since the launch of a book which she jointly authored.