Depending on which genealogical web site you prefer, there is good, or bad news.
In several columns I have mentioned that some Italian genealogical records are available on FamilySearch, some on Portale Antenati, and some on both.
Recently, there has been a significant change, one I am profoundly unhappy with.
An agreement was signed recently that has done the following:
If the records appear on the Antenati site, they will be in the FamilySearch catalog, but you cannot view them EVEN IN A FAMILYSEARCH CENTER OR AFFILIATE, unless you are logged into FamilySearch with a church login.
If the records do not appear on the Antenati site, the restrictions continue as before. You might need to be at a Center or Affiliate. Some records can possibly be viewed from home.
This is all confusing, even for me!
So for Italian genealogical records, if you are a member of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter Day Saints, you can access records with no change. So for the members of the LDS Church that have Italian ancestry, they can continue to use the records with the superior interface of FamilySearch.
If, like me, you are NOT a member of the LDS Church, you have to content yourself with using the Antenati site, depending on the records they hold.
For example, the records from Triggiano, Bari are divided up thus:
Births 1809-1920, Marriages 1809-1945, Deaths 1809-1945 could all be accessed at a FamilySearch Center or Affiliate library…….not anymore!
Births, marriages and deaths 1809-1900 are in the FS catalog but can only be viewed on Antenati.
Births, marriages and deaths 1901-1920 are in the FS catalog and can be viewed on FS from anywhere.
1921-1929 Births cannot be viewed at all because the privacy laws were changed to 100 years. So they have microfilm numbers but nobody can see them anymore. I know it’s 2024 and thus births up to at least 1923 should be viewable, but as of now, they are not.
1921-1929 Marriages and Deaths are in the FS catalog and can be viewed on FS from home or anywhere else.
1930-1935 Marriages and Deaths are in the FS catalog but can only be viewed on Antenati.
1936-1945 Marriages and deaths are in the FS catalog and can only be viewed at a Center or Affiliate.
I cannot speak to other provinces and regions, but this confusion is going to make genealogy very difficult for new non-LDS researchers.
I wish I could explain the logic behind this “agreement”. Why would FamilySearch give us access to records regardless of church membership, and then take that access away and grant it ONLY to church members? Doesn’t it seem that far more descendants of Italians are more likely to be Catholic than LDS? Is FamilySearch going to start denying access to anyone but LDS Church Members? I do hope this is not the direction they plan to go.
Any records that can no longer be viewed on FamilySearch just show the camera with a triangle (it is no longer the camera with the key.) If you click on that camera, you get the following:
There are other records that are held by national record repositories in other countries, but they are typically viewable in FamilySearch with a pop-up that says “Images provided by the National Archives of Scotland” or something similar. So we can use the FamilySearch site with no change. Why can’t we view images on FamilySearch with a pop-up “Images held at the Provincial Archives of Bari”? The images that are on Antenati were created by FamilySearch, so why is Antenati the place we have to go to view them?
For those of you who wonder why I am bad-mouthing Antenati, it is a question of the interface on the web site. My primary complaint is that on FamilySearch, there is an image number in the corner of the image screen, and if I see that I need to jump 100 records forward, I do not have to click the forward button 100 times.
I can just add 100 to whatever image number I am already on, and then go there. Contrarily, on Antenati, I either have to click forward 100 times, or I have to change screens to the thumbnails, and scroll 100 thumbnails forward, then click on the thumbnail. Why can’t Antenati just allow me to change the image number?
This is important to Italian researchers because we have to go to the index to find the name(s) we want, which might be image 493 on that “film”, and we need record number 320 for that year. So we need to leap forward from the index image to the page that has record #320. This would typically be clicking the forward button many times.
In addition, each time an image comes up on FamilySearch, it zooms in the same way as the previous image. So if you need to read the name and the parents, you zoom in. Then you jump 100 images and it will also be zoomed in the same way. Not Antenati.
Antenati always brings up an image that is too small to see, so you have to zoom in. Then you go forward to the next image, and it is also too small to see, so you have to zoom that one also.
Finally, Antenati’s image servers are much slower than FamilySearch, so it takes longer to load and zoom and view each image.
I hope to be able to report in a future column that these problems with the interface will be fixed, but don’t count on it! It has worked this way since it started, and so far I have seen no updates or improvements.
Also, Antenati has no additional records added to it, so instead of working exclusively in Antenati, you have to jump back and forth between Antenati and FamilySearch.
I will keep you up to date with any changes that happen with this “agreement”.