Partnerships and Collaboration - ain't it great!

Dick Eastman at Eastman's Online Genealogy Newsletter has posted several very exciting notices of partnerships that have been announced this morning at the NGS Conference in Richmond. These partnerships are going to open up a whole new world of opportunities for researchers!

Quintin Publications Partners With WorldVitalRecords.com To Make Thousands of Genealogical Databases Accessible

Historic Ellis Island Passenger Records Receive Expanded Online Access This is a partnership between The Statue of Liberty-Ellis Island Foundation, Inc., World Vital Records, Inc. and FamilySearch.

More Than 4,500 Family History Centers Worldwide to have Free Access to WorldVitalRecords.com

Other recent announcements, posted by Dick and many other genea-bloggers, regarding partnerships and expanded availability of content include:

ProQuest CSA Teams Up with LexisNexis to Add Selected Serial Set Content to HeritageQuest Online "The addition of the Private Relief Actions and Memorials and Petitions from the LexisNexis Serial Set collection serves the growing genealogy and local history segment of the public library market. " Note that HeritageQuest is available only to libraries, not to individuals.

Footnote.com Teams With FamilySearch to Release Revolutionary War Pension Files "This new partnership brings together two organizations that will utilize their combined resources to digitize and make available many large historical collections. The first project will be the three million U.S. Revolutionary War Pension files, which will be published for the first time online in their entirety."

This past Tuesday, following the Footnote and FamilySearch announcement, Randy Seaver of Genea-Musings gave us his thought on what this means to the future of genealogy and research. You'll have to scroll down past the announcement to find his comments...

But, perhaps the most important recent announcement is that FamilySearch will Provide Access to the World's Genealogical Records. FamilySearch announced "its Records Access program to increase public access to massive genealogy collections worldwide. For the first time ever, FamilySearch will provide free services to archives and other records custodians who wish to digitize, index, publish, and preserve their collections. The program expands FamiliySearch's previously announced decision to digitize and provide online access to over 2 million rolls of copyrighted microfilm preserved in the Granite Mountain Records Vault. A key component of the program allows FamilySearch and archives to team with genealogy websites to provide unprecedented access to microfilm in the vault. The combined results ensure a flood of new record indexes and images online at www.FamilySearch.org and affiliated websites."

Godfrey Memorial Library and FamilySearch Centers Announce Partnership "The Godfrey Library has been digitizing much of their information and is now accelerating that effort. Even better, visitors to LDS FamilySearch Centers around the world will now have free access to the digitized material."

These are indeed exciting times for genealogists as well as researchers in general! I'm sure there will be more announcements in the near future. Don't you just love competition and collaboration, I sure do!