Talk:Life After the IGI

this is a great article and would be very helpful to send to patrons with questions about the future of the IGI, except for the two paragraphs which refer to temple ordinances. This is a very touchy subject with people who are not members of our faith. I wonder if those two paragraphs could be deleted from the article.

This goes to the thesis of the paper--the IGI was designed for _______, not for genealogy. Consequently, it has major limitations and replacing it is a good thing. Genealogists should welcome a replacement, rather than demand its persistence. What would you say instead of those two paragraphs? Robert 20:21, 28 February 2012 (UTC)

Robert, I hesitate to chop up a carefully written article with this suggestion, and to blur the main point as well. My only purpose is to produce a document which can be sent out to patrons who are already disturbed at the thought of losing the content of the IGI. This is so beautifully crafted, it seems like a great answer to their questions. “Created and published primarily to assist members of The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints (LDS) to identify their ancestors and other relatives and to avoid duplication of efforts.

so modify this paragraph and skip the 2nd. Probably better that you craft it than I but this is the suggestion if we are to use it for other purposes than its original intent.

Jean Robbins

Supervisor - Historical Records Patron Services

I see your point. The article was designed for the general public. The information about ordinances is in our currently printed public guides to using the IGI. The content has also been approved to be filmed and published with our training videos.

If I don't explain that it was designed to prevent duplication of ordinances, how do I explain why the Church extracted records and subsequently threw them away? That doesn't "assist members...identify their ancestors...and to avoid duplication of efforts." Obvious duplicity makes people trust the Church less, not more. Robert 18:21, 1 March 2012 (UTC)

Jean, it became clear how to handle the 2nd paragraph and I've made the changes. I'm still open to suggestion on how to handle the first without subterfuge. Robert 18:38, 1 March 2012 (UTC)

Robert, thanks for explaining better our policy related to information displayed about the IGI to the public. That was a key piece of knowledge that I needed.

The IGI had one other aspect that was extremely useful for genealogical purposes. The IGI contained some patron submissions that were created from personal first hand knowledge of the patrons. Therefore, that information within the IGI was extemely valuable to genealogists. Over the years, FamilySearch has slowly removed this valuable resource. For example, originally the IGI listed heirs and ordinance dates in conjunction with the submitted names. All that data was on the IGI discs which were available to the public through Family History Centers. When this information was then placed online, the Family History Centers were instructed to throw out the CDs with the understanding that the same information was now available online and would be continually updated. However, with the advent of NewFamilySearch, the data within the online IGI database was truncated and the ordinance dates were no longer shown AND the heirs were no longer shown. Removing that data rendered the IGI in general far less valuable genealogically. Previously, if an IGI record represented a specific individual, and the heir listed was that individual's child, and the ordinance dates were within that child's lifetime, a researcher could conclude that the data on that IGI record was submitted by the child. Furthermore, the dates of the ordinances performed by the heir/child could be looked up in the original temple records and there was often further information available to genealogically identify the individual. Unfortunately, all that data has now been removed and nothing has been given to replace this. Early members of The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints recorded their knowledge of their parents and ancestors within the temple records. That data was then indexed and placed in the IGI. No index of those "first-hand knowledge" temple records now exist. I have several ancestors for whom the only source of their names are found when their child recorded their names in the temple records. I no longer have any access to that data. While I agree that the bulk of the IGI was useless from a genealogical perspective, to say that the entire IGI was not genealogically useful is to overlook these extremely valuable portion of the IGI.