FreeREG - Obtaining the Approval of The County Records Office.

Obtaining the Approval of The County Records Office

It is important for the County Coordinator to develop, where possible, a good working relationship with their County Records Office or Archive Centre. The name will vary from County-to-County. If you do not know the name and location of your Records Office then the following page may well provide you with Record Office Names and Links. Failing all else just do a Google search for the X Records Office (Where X is the County Name).

If you live in the area of the Records Office, make an appointment to see the County Archivist of head of the Records Office and tell him/her about the FreeREG project and seek their cooperation. If, like me, you live far away then a letter or telphone call will have to surffice. Remember, if you are talking to them be sure to stress the nature of FreeREG. We are NOT publishing any materials, transcripts, indexes or registers. We ARE creating a searchable index of the names of people who are entered into baptism, marriage and death registers as a research tool to assist people locate where they should undertake more detailed investigations.

The one area where their explicit approval is required, is on obtaining access to copies of the materials held by the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter Day Saints.

Such an approval has already been given to FreeREG by some County Records Offices. To request such an authority you may like to consider using a the following type of letter for all forms of copies of records. The following letter asks explicitly for approaval to use digital copies. Only use this if you know there is an agreement between the LDS and the County records office for digitization of the county records. of the following type. You would want to place your coounties name in place of the X and should consider addressing it to the head of the office by name rather than position.

Be sure to let the Project Manager know how you make out with this approach, as you experience will enable us to improve our advise.

Examples of the type of approvals we have received are available below.