Temple Submissions

Many people doing temple work do not understand the process. The most important part is first doing thorough research to document individuals and their marriages and children with full names, dates, and correct places. The more this is done the less duplication will exist.
Next people have to understand names and research to check already completed work to avoid redoing work that is already done. Just using temple ready does not do this. Nor using temple update. Currently individual online International Genealogical Index (IGI) lookups are necessary, and/or using PAF Insight or other programs to assist. This doesn't completely solve the problem but also reduces duplicates.
A combination of all these plus analyzing properly individuals will help you determine if someones temple work has been done. As mentioned before, if the name isn't slightly right, or the date is wrong, or the place is wrong, the ordinance was still done and does not need to be repeated.
Another part of the process -
When done through temple ready the work has only been submitted. Once this file is processed at the temple ordinances will appear online as being cleared. If you are not printing the cards and doing the ordinances yourself but just submitting to the temple be prepared for ordinances taking years to complete.
Baptisms may be done more rapidly but endowments submitted for the temple to do can take years. Sealings even longer.
So next time you think about submitting names to the temple, you may want to rethink and have your family do them, otherwise they may still be waiting for someone to do them.
From the inside - James.

LDS Church - Ancestry.com

In case you missed it, the LDS Church in early 2007 made the determination not to continue paying large sums of money for Ancestry.com database access in their libraries.
They moved to a program of partnering with libraries worldwide and are in the process of making more available in their libraries, family history centers, and on their site.
Since they had lost access to all the digitized census images and indexes of Ancestry.com they moved agressively to mobilizing an army of volunteers to index the censuses on their own. This is the Family Search Labs projects.
More and more records including censuses are coming online.
Now in the last month, an agreement with Ancestry.com for the top 13 regionals centers and the main library with Ancestry.com to use the records, but no current committment for roughly 4,000 other centers.
Smells like Ancestry.com realized they were missing out on not just some money from the Church but all the referrals from people who use it in the libraries then buy it themselves. For the church its a stopgap that helps at least some while they do without and create their own.
Stay tuned for future agreements if they really happen.
From the inside - James.