Dear Ancestry,
I woke up this morning and was utterly delighted. Your new indexes included ‘England and Wales, Death Index, 2007-2013‘ AND ‘Scotland and Northern Ireland, Death Index, 1989-2013‘. Within the two collections, your lovely shiny website told me that there were nearly two million records. I was excited! Some up-to-the-moment records…. Wowee!
Without further ado, I put a link on Facebook informing my friends, professional colleagues and everyone else about your amazing work. I simply wrote ‘Yippee!’ as that covered it all. Other professionals tweeted their excitement and shared the joyous news whilst I was out working on some cases. [We even signed two cases but that’s another story …. one for another day….]
To be honest, I am disappointed Ancestry. Very disappointed. Your indexes are not what we genealogists would call the England and Wales death indexes for 2007-2013. Anything but. The sources you say are ‘Original data: British Death Indexes. Various sources’ – not helpful in the slightest. What exact data sets have you indexed? What are these various sources of which you speak?
Many people speak ill of the commercial genealogical/family history sites (of which you are a leading light) and we professionals do our utmost to promote the use of your wonderful collections. Misleading our fine community of dedicated researchers does not help the cause. Are you planning on actually providing us with access to the full General Register Office (GRO) indexes for 2007-2013 at some point this year? The inclusion of birth, marriage and death indexes would be greatly appreciated by us all.
And in the meantime, whatever new indexes/collections you do add, please could you (a) provide us with full source citations and (b) title them in an appropriate way so as not to excite and then deflate us genies within a very short time frame?
Many thanks,
A dedicated Ancestry subscriber.
