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Advice

Family History Center Form 31768 Request for Photocopies

Form 31768 is used to Request for Photocopies of Census records, books, microfilm, or microfiche from the Salt Lake City, Utah, offices of the Family History Department of the LDS Church. Microfilm and / or Microfiche records may include birth, marriage, death, or burial records.

First of all, print the form. You may need to modify the Print settings on your browser so that the URL and page numbers do NOT appear on the printed document.

Once you have visited your local LDS/FHC and know what documents you want to order, just complete the form:

Fill in you name and address on side one. There are a few rules listed here as well as the address to mail it to.

Side two is broken into 4 sections:

Each section has the first line already completed with an example of how to fill it out. The only part I have ever used is the second one - General Microfilm Microfiche.

This section has six columns:

  1. Family History Library Microfiche/Microfilm Number - this is where you write the number of the microfilm/microfiche where you expect to find the actual record. This number generally comes from the FHL catalog. In the case of Chicago birth or death records, it is the number when you expect to find the actual certificate. Remember that they used the same certificate number more than once in some years, so you may end up ordering more than one roll.
  2. Name of Individual - The example shows first name first but I have had Salt Lake City make the mistake of reading this as last name first for names such as "Herman."
  3. Title, parents/spouse.... - I just put "Death Record", "Birth Record," "City Directory" etc. here.
  4. Complete Event Date - Put the date of the death, birth, etc.
  5. Complete Event Place - I write "Chicago, Cook, IL" here
  6. Registration, page.... - This is where you write down the certificate number that you find in the birth and death indexes. These are the indexes by name where you find the birth/death dates as well. You cannot use the number from the 1871-1933 microfilm index. You must use the microfiche indexes. If odering a copy of a city directory, just leave this blank.

I hope this helps. I have probably used this form over 100 times over the years and it is not foolproof. My success rate of getting what I want is probably only 80%. But it only costs $2.00 for 8 records so it is still well worth it. I would be happy to help anyone who has problems with the process.

Contributed by John Hallman

Additional Advice

Here are some additional comments which might help in using this form:

Salt Lake has several different forms and some of them seem confusing. When a patron comes to a local family history center and wants only a few copies, he can use the form. The volunteer or the director at the center should stamp the family history center name and their FHC number in the boxes below the patron's name. However, since the form is on line I don't know if they have to do that anymore.

(page 1)
The patron needs to fill out name, address, etc. in the top box. After ordering what they want, Salt Lake will send the information they copied directly to the patron and not send it to the FHC.

(page 2)
Census records
The patron needs to fill out film number, etc. from the census. I have never seen anyone fill this part out. The patrons I've worked with have felt that you might as well view the census because the cost is not much more than sending in the $2.00 minimum and there may be other families that are related on it and it usually comes in a shorter time than copies from SL. Salt Lake works mostly on volunteers and if they have a deluge of requests it takes longer.

Microfiche
I's usually cheaper to order the fiche than send for copies, since the fiche only cost $.15 and a copy costs $.25. However, for bigger collections of fiche, it would be worthwhile. Fill in the spaces from information the patron gets off the fiche index, fiche, library catalog or on line from Salt Lake. (Same with fiche indexes.)

Books
That's the one that's most used in our FHC because Salt Lake doesn't take requests to microfilm or fiche books anymore - they had too many and now do them as they can. Fill out the information.

When the patron has everything filled out on the form, they have to enclose a check or money order - $.25 per copy with a $2.00 minimum and mail it to the address at the top of the first page. Sometimes it takes less than two weeks, sometimes more.

Contributed by Barbara

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