The following announcement was written by Simmons Historical Publications and World Vital Records, Inc.:
Provo, UT, December 03, 2007 -- Simmons Historical Publications has recently partnered with World Vital Records, Inc. to make more than 765 of its valuable genealogical books accessible online for the first time.
“I have personally transcribed nearly 600 of these books from this collection. These are books that normally one would have to travel to a courthouse to read a microfilm to view. Through this transcription work and our partnership with World Vital Records, we have made these records much easier to access and are excited to have them available online for the first time at World Vital Records,” said Laura Willis, Co-owner, Simmons Historical Publications.
The Simmons Historical Publications collection will be free to access for ten days (until December 13, 2007) and contains valuable genealogical information such as vital records, census records, deeds, wills, newspaper abstracts, court records, tax lists, maps, and much more. The publication collection can be accessed at http://www.worldvitalrecords.com/contentlisting.aspx?cat=shp.
“The fun part of my job is finding data such as the Simmons Historical Publication collection where one can see how consistent extraction work performed over a number of years has resulted in a large, valuable database,” said Yvette Arts, Director, Content Acquisition, World Vital Records, Inc. “Simmons Historical Publications’ many years of discipline and hard work brings greater access to these records.”
The first launch of the Simmons Historical Publications data will include a collection of more than 40 books containing records from Western Kentucky, Tennessee, and North Carolina.
“I think this partnership is going to wonderful. It will be a great way to share some of our information in an online format,” said Sherry Adams, Co-owner, Simmons Historical Publications.
You just announced the online source from Simmons and Vital, you should go to any of the books and type in the word slave or negro, and see what a great African-American genealogy source there is. Dr. Rose
Posted by: James Rose | December 05, 2007 at 08:50 AM
I think this is deceptive since there are no where near 600 books that are available for free for 10 days. None of the Graves Co. books are even on the list. Once they are all on WVR it might be worth spending the dollars to have a WVR subscription, but even the free peek at the Simmons collection is not helpful at this juncture because the available material is so limited.
Posted by: catpurrson | December 05, 2007 at 11:00 AM
With the several plans to subscribe to World Vital Records, I think it is a very reasonably priced service. That they allow a 10-day free access is simply a bonus. The announcement above indicates these books will be made available, not that they are all NOW available. READ! "The first launch of the Simmons Historical Publications data will include a collection of more than 40 books containing records from Western Kentucky, Tennessee, and North Carolina."
This isn't a controversial topic. This service helps and will continue to help genealogists and historians.
Happy Dae.
http://www.ShoeStringGenealogy.com
Posted by: Happy Dae | December 05, 2007 at 11:27 AM
---> I think this is deceptive since there are no where near 600 books that are available for free for 10 days.
I didn't think it was deceptive. I thought the announcement was clear that there were only 40 books on the initial free period when the announcement said, "The first launch of the Simmons Historical Publications data will include a collection of more than 40 books containing records from Western Kentucky, Tennessee, and North Carolina."
The other 725 books obviously will be added later.
Posted by: Dick Eastman | December 05, 2007 at 12:06 PM