Any American doing Irish research will recognize the name John Grenham. In doing a Google search this evening I ran onto an excellent column written by this renowned genealogist for the IrishTimes.com. I was attracted to an article in which Mr. Grenham complains just a bit, but not too strenuously, about Ancestry.com’s “web records” searches. Clicking on his archives for January through May of 2012, I ran onto quite a lot of excellent material dealing with Irish research. It’s worth spending some time with…
Following is a teaser from John’s “The Fruits of Others’ Labour” column:
Ancestry.com, based in Provo, Utah, is by far the biggest commercial online genealogy company, with 1.8 million subscribers and a turnover in 2011 of $400 million. Over the past decade they have expanded steadily by buying up smaller rivals – last week the U.S.-only archives.com cost them a mere $100 million. Ancestry is steadily becoming the default option for most researchers, the Microsoft of online research
One irritating little fly in Ancestry’s ointment over the years has been the lack of a significant collection of Irish records. In the past twelve months they’ve been going about removing the fly, in ways that have raised eyebrows and blood pressure here in Ireland. The digitising of the National Library’s microfilms of the registers of the Catholic diocese of Meath without asking either the Library or the diocese is only the most conspicuous example.
