Wednesday 15 August 2012

More on FindmyPast Ireland

I announced earlier that FindmyPast Ireland (www.findmypast.ie) had been updated and relaunched with new subscription options, including a new World subscription (see http://britishgenes.blogspot.co.uk/2012/08/findmypast-ireland-goes-worldwide.html). A couple of other observations since then:

1) Previously FindmyPast Ireland had an irritating glitch which meant that whenever you tried to search within a date range, the two years specified as the parameters for that range never had results returned for them. So for example, if I did a search for an event with the year range as 1901 to 1901 (i.e. for an event that happened in 1901!), nothing would be returned - but if I then changed the search range from 1900 to 1902, results for 1901 would appear (but not 1900 or 1902)! In other words, you had to go one year earlier and one later for any year range you were actually interested in. I checked this a couple of weeks ago and it still seemed to be happening - but with the new set up, a search for a particular year range will now include the full range, including the two years specified.

2) It would seem that whichever site you subscribe to for a world subscription, you can use your log in details on one of the other FMP sites with the same collections. I have a month or so left on my Irish subscription, but purchased the US Pioneer sub last week for just under £38. The log in details I use for both sites are the same, so when I tried to log in to the American site earlier, it stated that the details I had were valid for each site - so which did I wish to log into? Out of curiosity I decided to log into the Irish site, which I was successful in, and it told me I now had a subscription on this site until August 2013. There's actually no real advantage to this that I can see - the records on the different sites would appear to be the same, with the only unique parts of the US and Irish sites being the local packaging - i.e. locally focussed blogs, help resources etc - which is free to access anyway. In fact, for client research, I will actually need to access my subscription on the American site, as its terms and conditions allow me to use it for professional purposes, which the Irish site doesn't (on FMP Ireland I need to buy PayAsYouGo credits to do professional research). I just found it curious!

Chris

Check out my Scotland's Greatest Story research service www.ScotlandsGreatestStory.co.uk
New book: It's Perthshire 1866 - there's been a murder... www.thehistorypress.co.uk/products/The-Mount-Stewart-Murder.aspx (from June 12th 2012)

2 comments:

  1. Can you access FindMyPast.co.uk using your US subscription?

    I have noticed that the free search options differ between the US and UK sites. An example is the ability to search census records by address on the UK site, which I have not found on the US site.

    In the meantime, I am sitting on the fence not buying anything because of the lack of clarity and consistency in the terms and conditions.

    ReplyDelete
  2. I just tried and was not able to, though my log in details are different for the UK site. No idea if that might change when FMP UK upgrades to the new set-up.

    Chris

    ReplyDelete