Just sending you an update on our effort to get the older Pennsylvania state death certificates
more accessible and also available online. So far there are 439 organizational supporters for
this cause including your organization and we are working on getting many more. However, we
still need individuals writing letters and sending emails (it all literally helps and it never hurts to
write more than once). As one state legislator told me it's all about the squeaky wheel.

We are pushing this month to get the PA State Legislature, while it is still in session, to make
death certificates after 50 years and possibly birth certificates after 100 years open records
even if they are not made available online right now. Just making them open records will not
cost the State of Pennsylvania a penny. If anything it would actually increase revenues coming
in because more people would be able to request these records including professional
genealogists. The June 1st, 2010 entry on The Latest News section of our website explains this in
more detail: http://users.rcn.com/timarg/PaHR-Access.htm .

By the way, there are now fifteen states that have scanned images of their older state death
certificates available online: Arizona, Delaware, Georgia, Kentucky, Massachusetts, Michigan,
Missouri, New Hampshire, North Carolina, Ohio, South Carolina, Texas, Vermont, Utah and
West Virginia. Six other states have extracted data available online: Washington, Alabama,
Louisiana, New Mexico, Idaho and Florida. Arizona, Delaware, Vermont, Washington and West
Virginia now have scanned images of their older state birth records online. The links to the
various states (except Delaware and Vermont) can be found on the Death Certificates for Other
States, Etc section of our website. However, it will not happen in Pennsylvania unless we make
enough noise about it.

Thank you for all your help.

Tim Gruber
610-791-9294