Genealogy 101: Repositories -- Part 2
by John Cardiff
This page last updated: 22 Mar 2009

As former U.S. vice president Al Gore noted when he first saw the Internet: "This changes everything."

He said that almost two decades ago. Since then traditional genealogy repositories have led the charge to the rear, all but ignoring the Internet -- and virtually every other technology discussed here.

At the same time, these technologies are re-shaping their reality, changing their bedrock foundation into quicksand.

Repositories seem stuck in their higher-cost/lower-returns 1950s business-as-usual model. They don't seem to grasp the Internet could be their savior -- cutting their costs, expanding their revenues, providing greater prestige. They prefer to look at the Internet as The Enemy -- the new whipping boy for all repository problems, from revenue decline to shrinking visitor counts -- in an era when genealogy itself is booming.

Repositories still live in a bricks-and-mortar world in which they expect genealogists to walk through their doors from every corner of the world. A few genealogists did at one time -- back when they had no choice. But in the main they don't anymore. Summer trips to Archives have fallen in popularity as online databases have grown. 

While genealogy has exploded in popularity in the last decade, fewer and fewer genealogists are wandering far from home (except by modem) to find what they need. In short, Archives are not benefiting from the growth they produced.

While genealogists live increasingly in the real-time world of new technologies, repositories continue (for now) to mosey along in first gear, spending really big bucks printing and mailing quarterly newsletters on paper, rather than posting daily tips on their income-generating web sites for free.

Most repositories actually own exclusive rights to darn few truly useful or valuable assets. Most of those assets are readily available from alternative, cheaper, more accessible sources. Other than motherhood, they tend to come up empty when they try to identify the compelling reason for their genealogical existence.

Their world is changing -- rapidly. It is probably already too late for most of them to catch up to their market, which in its headlong rush to perfection for free immediately, has become a train thundering down the track in another direction.

So perhaps you should discount my moment-ago request that you support your local repository. After all, you'll need that money to subscribe to the exploding list on online resources.

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