From its press release:
Beginning immediately, all public gatherings of Church members are being temporarily suspended worldwide until further notice. This includes:
- Stake conferences, leadership conferences and other large gatherings
- All public worship services, including sacrament meetings
- Branch, ward and stake activities
Where possible, leaders should conduct any essential leadership meetings via technology. Specific questions may be referred to local priesthood leaders. Further direction related to other matters will be provided.
The full announcement is available at https://newsroom.churchofjesuschrist.org/article/gatherings-worldwide-temporarily-suspended.
I've not seen confirmation of this, but I am assuming this will affect family history libraries and any family history classes being provided at a local level (I have already seen some classes posted online as being cancelled).
I'm further assuming there is no immediate impact on any online planned activities - a list of classes in March, including some Irish classes on Tuesday 17th, is available at https://media.familysearch.org/free-family-history-classes-and-webinars-for-march-2020/.
I have seen some calls on Twitter for FamilySearch to consider lifting its blocks on online access for some records during the next few weeks, as people begin to self-isolate. If it is possible, a worthwhile action?
Chris
You can pre-order my new book, Tracing Your Scottish Family History on the Internet, at http://bit.ly/ChrisPaton-Scottish2 (out April). Also available, Tracing Your Irish Family History on the Internet (2nd ed) at http://bit.ly/ChrisPaton-Irish1 and Tracing Your Scottish Ancestry Through Church and State Records at http://bit.ly/ChrisPaton-Scotland1. Further news published daily on The Scottish GENES Facebook page, and on Twitter @genesblog.
The restrictions on certain FamilySearch collections (for instance, ones that can only be viewed in an LDS family history centre) tend to be imposed by the owners of the original records or are for copyright reasons. So FamilySearch doesn't necessarily have the rights to release the records as they are bound by agreements prior to their digitising the records for viewing at their premises.
ReplyDeleteI started a question on the FS forum about whether relaxing the restrictions might occur: https://getsatisfaction.com/familysearch/topics/relaxing-restricted-access-due-to-fhc-closures. No response from FS Staff has been received yet.
ReplyDelete