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Cook County Vital Records Indexes Online

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Cook County Vital Records Indexes Online

Posted: 8 Jul 2008 9:41AM GMT
Classification: Query
For those who feel that the Cook County Vital Records indexes are inadequate and/or that the fee of $15 per record is too high: you may want to make your opinions and suggestions known to the people who set these policies. There is a place on the Cook County Genealogy site where you can "contact us." A polite explanation of the problems with this site by many users may eventually have the desired effect.

In any event, we can be certain that there will be NO improvement UNLESS we tell Cook County about our concerns. There is no point in "giving them time" and waiting to "see if it improves." IT WILL NOT IMPROVE because the Cook County Clerk's Office does not even know that there are problems with their web site. The comments on this Cook County message board are very interesting for us to read, but we are preaching to the choir. I doubt that the Cook County Clerk's Office reads these comments.

The Cook County office may be expecting many more certificate orders than they will get, and they won't know why their sales expectations are not being met unless we tell them. As so many genealogists were quick to see the problems with the indexes, it is clear that Cook County did not ask for ideas from genealogists before they compiled the indexes and set the fees. They will have no idea what has gone wrong with their plan. It may be too late to go back and add more personal identifying information to the entries they have already posted, but there may be other solutions that would make the project more useful. At the least, they may be able to add identifying information (age, parents's names or whatever is appropriate) to the records they have not entered yet. If they cannot come up with a way to improve the indexes, then they may need to reduce the certificate fees significantly. Genealogists who have ancestors with common names will not buy certificate after certificate for $15 each trying to find the right one (especially since we do not yet know which records have not yet been indexed). If the fee were a lot lower, genealogists might buy multiple certificates in order to get the one they need.

Let's offer our opinions and ideas to the powers that be in Chicago so that this web site can meet the objectives of Cook County and of the genealogists who would like to use it.

You can e-mail them directly at

genealogy@cookcountygov.com

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