More on World Vital Records

Elizabeth Lapointe recently pointed out in a posting on her Genealogy Canada blog that some books from the Dundurn Group are now available on World Vital Records.

The Dundurn material includes lots of good reference material, including: The Genealogist's Internet by Peter Christian (2003), DNA and Family History: How Genetic Testing Can Advance Your Genealogical Research by Chris Pomery (2004) and Strangers at Our Gates: Canadian Immigration and Immigration Policy, 1540-2006 (1997?). Valerie Knowles. (1997). These are not the current editions but still contain valuable information.

A subscription also gets you access to a good range of books from Archive CD Books Canada.

So why haven't I subscribed yet?

In part it's that I'm already subscribed to some of the material another way. For example, WVR's valuable UK census and civil registration indexes are from FindMyPast.

It's also because I'd be paying for a large amount of material I don't need. For their US subscribers WVR manages this by offering a US only subscription. You can purchase access to 800 million names in the United States, "normally $49.95 AND you can sign up today for HALF PRICE, $24.95." That's 3.1 cents per million names.

But if, like me, you have virtually no US interest your only option is to pay $99.95 for access to all 1,188,558,699 names, including the 800 million which are of little interest. That's 19.3 cents per million for the non-US names.

The pricing seems a bit odd. Why would a US name cost less? The US people I know are worth as much as anybody else, on average.