Here are the key Maryland State Archives links Bob was referring to:
Maryland State Archives Home Page
http://www.mdarchives.state.md.us/msa/homepage/html/homepage.html
This has links to all of the sites below.
Maryland State Archives Reference and Research
http://www.mdarchives.state.md.us/msa/homepage/html/refserv.html
This has links to their descriptions of all the different types of records
they have.
(birth, cemetery, death, church, immigration, etc.)
Vital Records Indexing Project of the Maryland State Archives
http://mdvitalrec.net/cfm/index.cfm
Currently has only the Death Record Indexes, still working on other records.
There appears to be a problem with that server as I write this, because it
will not currently allow access. Normally, it has been working for me.
Archives of Maryland On-Line
http://www.mdarchives.state.md.us/megafile/msa/speccol/sc2900/sc2908/html/in
dex.html
This has old Baltimore City Directories and other old state records that you
can actually search online.
Regarding accessing the Vital Records images, if the images won't open, try
reinstalling Acrobat Reader, even if you already have it on your computer.
I had a similar problem, caused by the link being broken between Internet
Explorer and Acrobat Reader, even though I had the latest versions of both.
Reinstalling Acrobat reestablished the link and it worked fine after that.
Somebody smarter than me suggested that, so I recommend you try it. It's
free and only takes a few minutes. If this works for you, please let the
list know. Good luck.
John
----- Original Message -----
From: "Robert S. Ireland" <rstephan(a)erols.com>
To: <MDGEN-L(a)rootsweb.com>
Sent: Tuesday, March 09, 2004 6:10 PM
Subject: Re: [MDGEN] Maryland State Archives, Volunteer Request
I have also had this problem with the Maryland Archives online BMD
indexes.
Getting to the site is no problem, seeing the index portion to choose
a
letter is no problem, but then it goes down hill. If I cllick on the a
letter then I get an error message. I have written to them three times
already. Twice they tried to tell me I need the latest versin of Internet
Explorer (IE) which I always have updated. After I finally got fed up with
this beush off I was told that they are looking into the matter and they
are
upgrading their system, which won't be readyuntil MAY!! Odd thing
is that
someone here once posted 2 different addresses to get into the Archive's
site. The one was the standard way and this is the one that failed.
However,
the other link they provided had worked for me in the past and I did
look
at
some of the cards last fall. Since then I have "misplaced"
that link and
can't find it to use it. I and I'm pretty sure others would truly
appreciate
it if someone could resend those two links. I'm also sure that if
they
would
notify the MD State Archives and let them know that there is a
temporary
solution for those not able to access the site's offering of the BMD
indexes
vis-a-vie that other link, that maybe they would be decent enough to
provide
that instead of a lame game of putting people off. I wouldn't say
that if
I
didn't know that there is a way in and they aren't providing
it. I'm
probably also a little miffed at IT folks who won't admit that they don't
know how to solve some of these issues or are underqualified to do so. It
just doesn't make sense to me, working in hi-tech that the state is
spending
all this money for a system that they don't have the proper
support for.
It
does not take months to solve these issues, it shouldn't even
take hours
and
if whoever set their system up can't resolve these issues in a
timely
fashion, maybe they should be charged for it.
Bob