Thread: How complete are genealogy sites ?

How complete are the digital transcriptions on genealogy sites such as ancestry.com, findmypast.com and familysearch.org and other such sites ?

For example if you visit The National Archive site freebdm.org, they furnish you with "percentage completeness" charts, as in this example for 'deaths' found here :-

FreeBMD : Coverage.

So my question is : How complete are these sites (ancestry.com, findmypast.com and familysearch.org and other such sites) in their digital transcriptions ?

If they are "not very complete" especially for the latter decades of the twentieth century, is it just a waste of time and tokens in doing searches ?

I have queried Ancestry.com, but their answer wasn't that informative. I wonder why. I think that I can guess.
...or am i just being too plain cynical ?

Hello

In some cases as complete as the records becoming available ( copywrite issues) and money ( funding) volunteers, time etc. allow.......?

elsabels

Sorry elsabels.
I just don't understand your answer.

I know that for the Archdiocese of Cashel and Emly County Tipperary in Ireland they will not have the BDM records as they are covered by copywrite. They were available under the previous Bishop but this one put a copywrite on them and they all had to be withdrawn from IGI. They are under lock and key in the safe in Salt Lake City. Look up can be done by one society, The Tipperary Family History Research Centre and is the only unit approved to do lookups and these are restrictive.

I think that is what Elsabels means by only as complete as copywrite will allow.

It depends on the individual records - Ancestry usually tell you what is included somewhere in the info about the individual databases.

But completeness doesn't mean everything - not all bmd copies made their way to the GRO for example, and I have several instances of people who just aren't on the census when they were alive and kicking!

Sorry for butting in......

Would that be the reason why I can not find a birth for my Great Grandfather and his brother, cos not all bmd copies made it to the GRO.

Hi Chohrge,

FreeBMD : Coverage

This gives the progress of the Freebmd records.

Ancestry have used the same records from 1837-1915. 1916-2005 is a searchable digitized version of indices reported to the GRO in London quarterly. There are also Baptism, Marriage and Burial records from 1538-1812 for the Greater London area and Births and Baptisms for the London area from 1813-1906. Other counties also have some but these have not yet been transcribed and may or maynot be complete.

On the home page of findmypast.com, it says that they have the complete set of BMD's from 1837-2006.

When I started my tree over 20 years ago, none of the records were transcribed. It meant trawling through each quarter seperately. I managed to get quite a way with my husbands surname using this method. Since the records have been transcribed, only a few of his surname seem to exsist now. You can't really blame the people transcribing as some of the writing is either very bad or too faint to read. Those transcribing are human after all and not machines even though it is hard to see sometimes how they couldn't see some names.
If I were starting now, I would find it a lot more difficult with some names unless I had the opportunity to go and search through the reords in person. It is a bit easier with the censuses at the moment as others can always look as well and give their opinion.

Tralena

I don't know why you can't find yours. I do know that some records aren't there though the originals are in parish registers, so the copies got lost. In some cases the events weren't registered - and in others they may have been indexed wrongly. In 1991 my brother-in-law married and his wife's maiden name is recorded as Searce in the index instead of Pearce!