Cook County (Illinois) Clerk David Orr's new genealogy web site has won a 2009 Achievement Award from the National Association of Counties, NACO announced today. The program entitled "Piecing Together the Past: Clerk David Orr's Genealogy Online" was selected as an example of an "effective and creative program" in the 40th year of the Achievement Awards.
CookCountyGenealogy.com, launched July 2, 2008, allows visitors to conduct free searches of birth, marriage and death indexes dating to 1872. Once a document is located, genealogists can download a high-resolution scan of the original for a $15 fee.
The new site received immediate, enthusiastic response from around the world. Users from 88 countries have generated more than 9.6 million hits to the site -- and bought enough genealogy records to pay for the project in just 12 weeks.
"This project was not a response to a publicly-perceived problem or a legislative mandate," Orr said. "We found an inventive way to expand and improve services, make our office more efficient and capitalize on an underutilized funding source."
The NACO Achievement Award will be presented July 26 during NACO's 2009 Conference in Nashville, Tenn.
You can see this great web site in operation at http://www.CookCountyGenealogy.com.
I thought it would be neat to search for my parents' marriage record (Chicago, 1944) there. It wasn't. Nothing found. Is this indexing complete?
Happy Dae·
http://ShoeStringGenealogy.com
Posted by: Dae Powell | June 12, 2009 at 08:23 AM
I searched for 4 different marriages (including my inlaw's) all of which took place in Cook County, but found only one. Certainly not happy with these results!
At least the one I did find (my aunt's 3rd marriage) enabled me to break the brickwall surrounding my aunt. I actually found her living in FL at the age of 98 last fall.
Posted by: Beverly Yackel | June 12, 2009 at 11:14 AM
I know that the indexing is incomplete, because I have yet to see my great-grandfather's death certificate come up and I have the certificate number so I check by that. I found some good records using this site and the ability to print them off right away, after paying of course, is much better than a several week wait.
Posted by: Sabrina | June 13, 2009 at 12:39 PM