Ancestry.com recently updated their “U.S., Evangelical Lutheran Church in America Church Records, 1781-1969” and have given it a slightly different title.

Ancestry.com has indicated that they’ve updated their ELCA (Evangelical Lutheran Church in America) database. As usual, there’s no indication as to “how” the database was updated. The years on the database as of the date of this post are now 1781-1969.

On 20 May 2018, the database had a slightly different title as taken from my blog post of that same date. I know that’s what the database was titled on that date as I copy the titles from Ancestry.com to prevent myself from making needless typographical errors. So they’ve apparently added materials that expanded the time frame of the database. Or they just realized the database title was wrong. It’s difficult to know just what they did.

But what’s new in this database? Do I need to search it again for people that I have already looked for in previous editions of this database? If I don’t know what’s new, I don’t know what families I need to revisit in this set of records.

Changes like this are one reason why it’s imperative to indicate the date a database was searched. It’s also frustrating as those who have included the title of the database in their citations now have an out-of-date title.

But the real frustration rests in not knowing what’s different. For those of us who perform actual searches of databases instead of having Ancestry.com serve up automatic search results on a cyberplate, it’s something of a pain.

Especially when we are paying subscribers.