Images at FamilySearch.org -- Here Today Gone Tomorrow?

Image courtesy of Victor Habbick at FreeDigitalPhotos.net

Just because we have access to digital images today via a database, doesn’t mean that those same images will remain available.  As more and more materials are digitized, remember that there are contractual agreements in place where access can either be withheld or eventually more widespread.

Earlier this year, some Cook County (IL records) were pulled from FamilySearch.  Read about this at The Ancestry Insider, Cook County Images Disappear From FamilySearch.org. Dick Eastman also discussed this in Why Was the Information Removed from Online?

On the other hand, NARA makes non-exclusive partnership arrangements with requirements for free access to those researching at NARA and sometimes to eventually being publicly available via the NARA website, etc.  You can learn about these agreements at [NARA] Digitization Partnerships.

I’ve also seen this with digitized newspapers.  At a certain point some were available via a subscription service encompassing many newspapers and then eventually a newspaper creates its own interface to which you can either subscribe or purchase articles via.

Do you know of other instances where a genealogy-related database was freely available and then not?

Or vice versa – a database where you used to have to subscribe that is now free?

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