Hi Cherri, First of, just stating (again) I'm not the João Ventura you wrote about :)
The situation in the Azores may be similar to the one in mainland Portugal. There, the records were all microfilmed and are being digitized by the LDS church. However, due to the agreement between the Portuguese government and the Utah Genealogical Society (I think they are now called FamilySearch Inc.), the records can only be made available on FamilySearch to church members. The general public has access to those records via the official Portuguese goverment organization (CCA, DGLAB, ARM). There are some exceptions to the above, as some archives weren't 'owned' by the Government itself, but rather by other branches such as universities (District of Braga archives) and city halls (Guimarães, Elvas). In these cases, the records are available to everyone. As you can understand it's also been very frustrating for us in Portugal that the DGLAB people take forever to make available to the general public what the LDS has made available to the church members for years. We also fail to understand why the agreement dictated this restriction. Recently we started a mail campaign that resulted in the current spurt of lots-of-records-every-day that began in July 10, and since then has made available over 5000 parish books online. I'm attaching the original letter. >From my discussion recently at the Horta archive, they confirmed that all these books from the CCA were microfilmed/digitized by the LDS church, and that they are the ones providing all the images. The CCA then applies the watermark and verifies that the images are accurate. So a little mail campaign may also help in this case. I can adapt the attached letter so that it addresses the CCA director instead if there's some interest, and make it bi-lingual so that you guys can understand what you're signing. Needless to say, paper still goes a lot further than e-mails in these bureaucratic environments. João Ventura On Wednesday, August 7, 2013 1:28:09 AM UTC+2, Cheri Mello wrote: > > I can't remember all the details, but when Joao Ventura (the archivist) > was in Utah, FamilySearch caught wind of it. He got a tour of Granite > Mountain and they "kidnapped" him for a special meeting. > > Maybe Joao will remember...I think that they told us (I was present for > that part) that ALL of their microfilm will be digitized in 5 or 6 years. > That was April 2012, so you can figure that out. They are indexing the film > as it becomes digitized. But Family Search has you do some American > records (to get used to their indexing system) before any "foreign" records. > > I think part of the meeting with Joao was to find out who to contact for > more record filming and that kind of thing. I don't think anyone was > opposed to to the records being accessible on the Internet. I think Family > Search's logic would be to put records online that have many researchers > using them. So if Brazil has almost 194 million people versus the Azores' > 246,000, well, that might explain Family Search's thinking. > > It's been awhile since I've asked, but maybe it's time for us to email the > CCA, telling them how grateful we are for their resource, it's much > appreciated, etc, etc. They don't have the counters on every page, so > depending on which page we've bookmarked, they may not be getting a true > count. So let's email them and maybe that will motivate them to put a few > more records online! Their email address is: > *drac...@azores.gov.pt<javascript:>(English or Portuguese) > * > > Cheri Mello > Listowner, Azores-Gen > Researching: Vila Franca, Ponta Garca, Ribeira Quente, Ribeira das > Tainhas, Achada > -- For options, such as changing to List, Digest, Abridged, or No Mail (vacation) mode, log into your Google account and visit this group at http://groups.google.com/group/Azores. Click in the blue area on the right that says "Join this group" and it will take you to "Edit my membership." --- You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups "Azores Genealogy" group. To unsubscribe from this group and stop receiving emails from it, send an email to azores+unsubscr...@googlegroups.com. To post to this group, send email to azores@googlegroups.com. Visit this group at http://groups.google.com/group/azores.
Exmo Senhor Director da DGLAB.docx
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