How does Ancestry.com acquire its data?

Question

I'm part of a small historic society, operating on a shoestring budget. We have some records that may be of interest to Ancestry.com; we're looking for any information or advice about the best way to go about this. Does anyone have any experience dealing with them?

I'm part of a small historic society, operating on a shoestring budget. We have some records that may be of interest to Ancestry.com; we're looking for any information or advice about the best way to go about this. Does anyone have any experience dealing with them?

The records we have are not specific family trees, rather we have some business records (customer names, etc.) from the early 20th century. Ideally, we would transcribe them and donate them to rootsweb, but, as a small volunteer group, we just don't have the 'staff' to tackle the project. Someplace large, like Ancestry, would have the technology to image and index the records. And while we'd like to be altruistic, we are always looking for ways to raise money to fund our programs and projects.

Answer 1

The genealogy department of your Public Libray may be interested in aquiring the data.

Answer 2

I like Ancestry.Com. However, people should not take for granted all the information in the family trees given are accurate. So much of it is not documented. You might see the same information over and over by different submitters. However, there is a lot of copying going on. I have memberships to it as well as Rootsweb, Genealogy.Com. For Texans, Ancestry has a lot of vital records and they are obtaining more records all the time from other states.
I have a quarrel with One World Tree. Some of the information has been put in by subscribers directly. . However, Ancestry.com has taken the liberty of taking the information from Ancestry World Tree and putting it into One World Tree. They will show a single individual with all the different information on that individual. But I have found at least twice they have combined 2 people into 1.

Answer 3

I've had a membership with Ancestry.com for a couple of years and my sister had a membership for a couple of years. We contributed to their database through our research while we were members. The most useful information we both got out of Ancestry.com was the various & sundry Census records we were able to access. Our family came from small towns and most of the local newspapers from those communities are apparently too small to make it into Ancestry.com's database. We were able to use the Census information as a guideline in our research but the actual birth, death & marriage information had to be retrieved from the communities via their Health departments, libraries, etc. I no longer have a membership with Ancestry.com, because the only information I have been able to find was the information I put into their database, myself. I do have a couple of cousins who have memberships right now and they are able to access my records for their research.

I think you should consider contributing your information to rootsweb.com instead of Ancestry.com. Ancestry.com accesses rootsweb.com's database and rootsweb.com doesn't cost anything. You might also consider familysearch.com as a place to contribute your information. They're also free. familysearch.com is the Mormon website and recognized by a lot of genealogists.

Answer 4

The Generations Network is an Internet company based in Provo, Utah and the largest for-profit genealogy company in the world. They run a growing network of genealogy and family-related websites.

Because the company is based in Utah, some mistakenly believe that it is run by The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints (or "Mormons"). However, according to the company's Public Relations Senior Manager, Peggy Hayes (as of January 2006), the company is privately held and the LDS Church has no stake in it.

You can see the various companies under the Generations Network banner here:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ancestry.com

Corporate Website:
http://www.thegenerationsnetwork.com/

Contact addresses:
http://www.thegenerationsnetwork.com/default.aspx?html=contact

Answer 5

If you're wanting to contribute you may also want to consider rootsweb.com which does have user-contributed databases. If you're wanting to sell I can't answer - just phone them and ask seems the best way.