Some of you may have been familiar with the Footnote.com website, as I have posted various items and links from it on this blog before. Recently Footnote was acquired by Ancestry.com and significant changes to the website occurred about the time my subscription was due for renewal. It gave me pause as Footnote became known as Fold3.
Footnote had been directed more generally at all types of historical records where Fold3 will focus on military records only. Certainly I do a lot of military research, but I liked the broader and wide open nature of Footnote and all the historical newspaper content. Hopefully none of the existing non-military content will be removed but neither will it be expanded.
The acquisition of Footnote/Fold3 by Ancestry.com has no doubt been the driving force behind these changes. It stirred up quite a hornets nest among subscribers. You would think maybe Ancestry.com/Fold3 could now offer access to both sites at one discounted price to appease the populace—but no such luck. There seems to be a move to segregate military records to Fold3 and non-military records to Ancestry.com. Hence, the consumer has to pay for two separate subscriptions if you want both. For Ancestry.com I can at least go down to our local library and get free access if so desired. I am assured that Fold3 will not remove any of the content I have added to the site over the past couple of years—much of it non-military in nature.
So this development is a bit disconcerting, but I am holding further judgement for the moment and biting the Fold3 bullet. I decided to renew my subscription and will give the "new" website a good test drive over the next year—and then decide if it is worth continuing.
See my Fold3 Spotlights.
I haven't added much recently as my access was limited after I let the subscription expire. I will resume my searches and items of interest will occasionally show up on this blog.
No comments:
Post a Comment