Personal Ancestral File is frozen

Eastman's Online Genealogy Newsletter: The End of PAF?: "Now a senior representative from the LDS Church has confirmed the rumors that have floated around for years: the LDS Church will not expend any more funds to develop a modern version of Personal Ancestral File.

LDS Church Historian, Elder Marlin K. Jensen, gave the keynote address at the October 6-7, 2006, Northern Utah Family History Conference and Symposium. He told how Personal Ancestral File was a major force in genealogy in past years. However, when the LDS Church senior executives look today at all the things that the Church could do to promote interest in genealogy and to provide resources to genealogists, it is obvious that commercial organizations are already providing excellent free and low-cost genealogy software. Any efforts by the LDS Church to 'compete' with the commercial organizations will not help meet the Church's goals to promote interest in genealogy and to provide appropriate resources to aid genealogists.

Instead, Jensen reports that the LDS Church's executives feel that the Church would be better served by concentrating its expenditures on the items that the Church can do best: digitizing microfilm and improving in-home access to original records, primarily via the www.FamilySearch.org web site."