One of my “spies” says that there are two people from FamilySearch in the Local History Division of the Rochester Public Library. Their plans are to first digitize directories in the collection that the library hasn’t already digitized. After that they will digitize the large collection of school yearbooks in the library’s collection. They are planning to stay at least two years so they may be doing a lot more.
When a crew from FamilySearch was here in the 1980s they filmed local Catholic Church records. That was all done on microfilm and it took a few years for those records to be made available. Now that the task is fully digital, it will probably only be a few months before these new records show up on the FamilySearch website.
To my knowledge “all” the Rochester Catholic Church records are not available on Family Search. I have been waiting for years for the St Boniface church records (I am interested in 1860-1920) to be available online. I have no doubt the LDS library has them on microfilm, but not all that microfilm has been digitized.
If anyone knows differently, please let Dick know. I will recheck later today because it has been several months since I made my periodic search. Thank you.
They are kind of in “limbo.” They are online (https://www.familysearch.org/search/catalog/453030?availability=Family%20History%20Library) but you have to be in a Family History library to view them. That is because the Rochester Diocese never gave permission to let them be fully available online. Of coarse that the was the 1980s when they or nobody would have known that there would be a thing called the internet.
To my knowledge the LDS has closed their local church libraries. The ones in Asheville, NC, and Tallahassee, FL, are closed. There is a LDS church near my house in Memphis. I will call them tomorrow.
The one in Buffalo reopened around the first of this year. One FH library in Rochester just reopened about a month ago. So call and see if the ones near you have opened again.