This is an Internet service providing vital records for 22 US states and many counties not countries. So right off the bat we must wonder why is is called Vital Search Worldwide? They must have had visions of expansion that apparently never came to fruition.
This website is older and has some big minuses but also has the potential to find more information on records not found elsewhere on the bigger, more well known sites like Family Search or Ancestry or World Vital Records. Check the examples on the lesson itself found on the link below. This is true because before we did indexing of the records which only selects certain information on a record so that they can be searched by name, the extraction programs took all of the information on the document down. Thus you may find more information on this site that one of the big online sites. This site (VSW) is accessible here in the library on only one of our 80 plus computers. The computer is marked with a VS on the monitor. It is located with most of the specialty programs computers near the scanners and copy machine. So if you are having trouble locating a particular record for more specific information it is worth checking these collections.
The cumbersome part is the actual searching. Some of the records are free and others are paid. The lesson explains this and what to do about it. One of the problems with searching is that each state and the year span and the event (Birth, Marriage and Death) are all searched in different ways.
So, in my opinion, it's definitely not the first place you are going to look for records you need but perhaps as a last resort. We need to know it is here and has some unique records that we just might find in it. And we also need to know how to use it. Here are some things that might help you. Every experience will be different with the aggregation of so many collections.
*It takes practice, especially to get to the less common databases on the site.
*Read "About This Database" and "For First Time Users" and Field Descriptions." They are important for this collection of records so do not skip them.
*Since there is only one computer we will need to work in twos as we figure it out together.
*The site is also encumbered with lots of ads that are sometimes hard to distinguish for the site itself. We noticed most of what is free runs right down the middle of the screen with the paid sites on both sides which is quite distracting.
*WorldVital Records and VitalSearch Worldwide are not the same databases. I chose our tree picture today because it is also old, dark and mysterious like this site perhaps. Haha! Good luck to us all!
So I guess our watch word for today is.........
Here's the url to the lesson: Thank you, Linda!
http://tinyurl.com/ps9po67
The lesson gives you some site by site comparisons, and step by step instructions on getting started. Very important to follow along on this one. Please let me know when you have completed this assignment. If there are problems along the way we'll discuss next week.
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