Impatience Redux

Two months ago, exactly, I was blogging about my impatience

I was concerned because it was January 7th, 2008, and the Missouri Death Certificate index still only went up through 1956. Not that any relatives died in 1957, mind you. It was all philosophical impatience. I realized however they weren't finished scanning through 1956, so I figured that was the hold up. The silly volunteer-scanners wanted to finish that first.

It's complete now. 1910-1957, indexed and scanned in.

One thing I really like about Missouri's death certificate index is their 'advanced search' options. You can input a string and indicate that the name begins, ends, or contains that string. That's very useful when dealing with surnames of variant spellings. For example, one of my surnames is "Cruvant" which can also be Kruvant, Cruvand, or Kruvand. So I just enter: ruvan and check 'contains'. All the results are displayed. I wish other online databases had this option.

I have found something new to be impatient about, and I might be impatient about it for awhile. An upcoming project for the Missouri Digital Archives appears to be their Penitentiary Records (1836-1939). It's so early in the project, all they have is the description. At least they're looking for more stuff to do.