Ancestry - New and Updated Collections

[Alandal]

I regularly check for new records added to Ancestry and for example, 28 new and updated sets were added in September 2018 - but no Additional records have been added since 30th September 2018.

Have they run out of records to transcribe or are they secretly working on a large set of records?

Al & Al

[jonw65]

I'm sure we all hope they are secretly working on something big!
John Reid was pondering the lack of new records on his blog the other day
https://anglo-celtic-connections.blogspot.com/2018/11/is-ancestry-running-out-of-steam.html

[horselydown86]

I'm pleased you raised this Alandal.  I had noticed the drought too.

In relation to UK records, my sense is that the drought is much longer than just a month.

There doesn't seem to have been a substantial new UK collection for many months.

It does seem that the costly and difficult business of digitising and indexing old documents is out of favour.

One has to conclude that the corporate view is that it is so much easier to push DNA kits.  Many of the episodes in the most recent season of Australian WDYTYA began with the subject doing a DNA test.

BTW, John Reid is way too kind to FindMyPast.  Yes, they post additions every week, but it's mostly fairy floss every week.

Meanwhile their Westminster Collection - announced with great fanfare six and a half years ago - remains half done (if that much) and appears to be abandoned.

And Westminster is only one of a list of collections announced by FindMyPast which remain incomplete and apparently forgotten.

ADDED:

I should have qualified my comment in relation to FindMyPast above by specifying that their UK additions to the site are mostly "fairy floss".

Their American and Irish customers are better served.

[andrewalston]

Yes, a whole month without anything new for anywhere in the world seems out of character.

My guess is something relating to the end of WWI, but USA-specific, as most UK records relevant to the Great War are already online.

[jc26red]

Maybe they are concentration on fixing the bugs in the system 😂, new releases seem to always come at a price.

I’m holding off renewing until something of interest comes along... seems like it might be a long wait.🙄

[coombs]

I noticed the drought as well, and admit I do find it a bit annoying that they have not released any new records for 6 weeks, unless they have a jolly good reason for it, as suggested.

FindMyPast Fridays to me are usually a waste of time, the records are often very small an obscure. They say "Exciting new Suffolk records" when it is maybe not even 1% of what is out there, or it is just 1 or 2 parishes, out of many hundreds and hundreds.

[andrewalston]

Well, I was wrong about the Great War stuff.

But this morning I got an email headed "What will our newest records hold for you?"

"Hooray!" I thought. So I looked.

Absolutely nothing since the update to "Beaver County, Pennsylvania, Tax Records, 1832-1925" on 30 September.

Checking again, the list of "new" records is identical to last month's, except that a list of Prisoners of War has disappeared. This is listed as arriving in early August, but is just an index to stuff they've hidden away on Fold3.

[coombs]

Now heading on for 2 months since the drought started and no new records uploaded. And the "UK Historic Photos and Prints" is hardy helpful for genealogical research, I can look at old photos by "doing the google".

The lack of new records on Anc is probably a big reason why I have done very little genealogy in the last month or so.

[jonw65]

As there are so few new records perhaps ancestry could change the default card catalogue search back to "Record Count" rather than "Date Added"