Good Deals at World Vital Records
Monday September 10, 2007
If you've been thinking about a subscription to World Vital Records, this might be a good time. They are running a subscription special until September 17 that offers up a free copy of RootsMagic 3 to anyone subscribing for a year at the regular annual rate of $49.95. Plus, you'll get an extra year's subscription for free - two for the price of one, plus the free software!
Even if you aren't interested the offer, it's still a good time to check out what World Vital Records has to offer. They just uploaded four pivotal years of the New York Times (1863, 1864, 1865 and 1918), for a total of over 2.3 million records. And like all new databases at WVR, the New York Times' Archive is free for the first week (until September 14).
Comments
Save your money. ProQuest already created a database of the entire New York Times starting from its inception in 1857. Almost every major library has a subscription. Many public libraries let patrons access the online NYT remotely if you have a library card. The NYT’s own website (nytimes.com) offers its entire archives online for a pay-for-view fee - this includes the most recent articles. You can search using Keywords - it is very accurate; has very few false positives. It doesn’t highlight the search term in the article, but it is extremely well done. The .PDF articles are clear, downloadable, and printable. World Vital Records has a long ways to go. It’s collection is growing, but it is disorganized. Still, it won’t hurt you to take a look at it. The Search engine identifies records by name search, little browising capability. The image viewer is extremely poor. Only shows tiny portions of a page or image, very limited functions for moving around the page or zooming, no clipping or saving features. Wish them luck, but this advertisement (Disquised as an article) is not an independent recommendation.
maybe I’ll find it more useful later but thus far it’s been a bust. Wish I could take it back. I subscribed thinking this site gave access to the census, not realizing one has to PURCHASE the census records separately. ALLCENSUS. This fact needs to be clarified.