Thursday, May 24, 2007

A One-Item Wish List

After the numerous announcements last week (all of which I appreciate and think will be great), I thought about the one item I'd love to see digitized. It would be the collection of SS-5's (Application for Social Security Card). [Okay, that's why it's called a wish list!]

What's on your one-item-make-my-research-easier-but I-know-it-won't-happen anytime-soon wish list?

2 comments:

Randy Seaver said...

Craig,

Great item for the wish list! Of course, there are many living people in the SS-5 applications, so they would have to have some controls on it. Since not everybody who has died is listed on the SSDI, the SS-5's would help solve many 20th century research problems!

My wish is "name list of people found in periodicals listed in PERSI." I've been told that this is impossible due to the copyright protections accorded to authors and the periodicals themselves. Oh well. My hope is that many repositories will partner with FamilySearch and get indexing done by LDS.

Cheers -- Randy

Craig Manson said...

Yes, I'd exclude the living folks. You got a good idea, too. By the way, I'm not convinced that copyright is the issue here. I say that because there are indices such as the Reader's Guide to Periodical Literature and others. Names could be extracted from the Reader's Guide (in publication since 1901) but it would be a task!