Michael Brophy just sent the following message to a local genealogy club, and probably to others, and I felt his information was interesting and helpful, especially for those doing research here.
I quickly wrote him to obtain permission to copy his message to my blog. He kindly gave approval. Michael's blogs are at Brophy Professional Genealogy and Heir Tracing and Brophy's Irish Genealogy Blog.
"While visiting the Massachusetts Vital Records Office in Boston yesterday, I discovered that the registry has now made birth records available online inside the registry for the first time. The years covered are 1953-1986 and do not include marriage or death records. There is not remote access at this time.
This service improvement should held researchers work more efficiently in the often crowded and under serviced research room. The new access to the records eliminates the limitation on viewing these records by waiting for a "call for slips" after obtaining a volume and page number from an index. The registry charges a step fee of nine dollars per hour to access vital records in the research room and has cut down on their research hours in recent years.
Secretary Nyberg of the Vital Records said that future plans for the project are to expand access. In a tour of the Vital Records Registry in 2009 by the New England Chapter of the Association of Professional Genealogists, he said that the goal is to have the records viewable at town halls throughout the state."
Michael Brophy
