In my opinion Antenati has taken some of the best features of Family Search and incorporated them into their site making it even better in my opinion.  It will take some getting used to but I believe I can help with that.

I am sure you have been playing with the site and discovered something for yourself but let’s see if I can pull it together for you.

First click on language and choose yours from the four offered, then click on FIND THE ARCHIVES and make a new bookmark for the site because this is where you will want to begin.

The top bar has several options: The site: Find the Archives: Tools: Family Stories: News.

TOOLS really has nothing of use to most of you but what there is mostly in English

FAMILY STORIES is just that.  Submitted by users.  NEWS hasn’t changed

So we are going to concentrate on THE SITE and FIND THE ARCHIVES

Now click on THE SITE

The video is in Italian and details the agreement between Family Search and Antenati

From the section on the right click on

Instructions:

Lots of general Information but in particular: –  

In order to protect the confidentiality of personal data, registers of births at least 100 years old and marriage and death registers at least 70 years old are made accessible on the Portal.

Copyright-The holder of all rights to the images is the General Directorate of Archives of the Ministry of Culture. The use of the images is strictly personal; they may not be published on other sites, portals or publications without the express authorization of the rights holder. Any use of the images for profit-making purposes is excluded.

High-definition images of the registers can be requested from the State Archives that keep the originals, as indicated in the Legal Notes. 

This says you can order copies from the State Archive but elsewhere it says you should order from the town. Mainly this applies to Cosenza who appear to be part of this site but actually aren’t. Certificates issued by the archives have no legal value and cannot be used for citizenship purposes unless a BOLLO is applied and you would only do this if the town copy has been destroyed.

Several phrases are highlighted and will link you directly to those pages.   

Click on Index of published names  Here is a list of already indexed records. So unless your Archive is on the list don’t waste your time searching by name. Not all registers in the archives listed are indexed. Not all archives are on the list, especially those in LAZIO. 

 National Register of Resident Population eventually will index the entire country (but not unless they get more volunteers.)  See JOIN THE PROJECT!

Back to the top and Find the Archives

You can SEARCH for an ARCHIVE by using the search box OR scroll down and use the list as you did previously but don’t get too excited when you see FROSINONE because all its going to give you is the status only -SCHEDULED. The words INDEXING STATUS to me is confusing as it implies the status of the (name) indexing NOT the status of the digitization.

NOTE:  For some reason Using the list to access CASERTA doesn’t work as its status is not indicated although we know it should say COMPLETE.  Use instead the search box (Caserta) then ENTER and click on the GREEN spot.  This will take you to SEARCH THE REGISTRIES. From there use LOCALITA’ to find the town. 

Where the State Archive indicates that it is COMPLETE you need to understand that the only thing completed is the uploading of the already digitized records so it does NOT include the listed military records since aren’t digitized yet.

Seeing COSENZA will excite many of you I am sure (it did me) BUT note, there is no INDEXING STATUS and when you click on SEARCH REGISTRIES nothing happens. Scroll down to ONLINE SOURCES and see that they have joined the “Portale della storia degli italiani”.  Click on this and you are taken to the search page for the Cosenza Archives where, if you do find a record for an ancestor you will have to order from them directly. You can pay for the copies by bank transfer and they will email the records.

To keep track of the digitization keep checking Family Search as they will have it available BEFORE it is uploaded to Antenati.

BACK TO THE ARCHIVE AND “SEARCH THE REGISTRIES”

Everything they have will come up so in ORDINAMENTO sort by ascending, descending or by year or RELEVANCE which is Italian alphabetical order ie:  Cittadinanza Matrimoni, morte, nascita

GO TO THE LEFT SIDE OF THE PAGE

Under SERIE you will see a partial list of towns click on expand the on the town you want.  If the list is huge use the search box as you type the list will get smaller.

TYPOLOGY is a list of the records including 10-year indexes. Choose, then,

YEAR gives you the option to choose and go direct to the year. 

At this point you might want to go FULL SCREEN, eliminating the tool bar of your computer or by using the full screen option on the antenati web page (right side).

Below the blue line you will see the CITATION for the volume and the 3 bars on the left will bring a drop-down menu.

Back to the left side click on the horizontal bars then the BLUE i to get a list of the pages. 

Now you can go quickly to the end to see if there is an index and jump back to the estimated page once you locate the ACT number. Once you have located the act you need the top line will give you the general citation for this register, you just have to add the act number. 

SAVING A HIGH-DEFINITION IMAGE:  It’s not easy but it is possible:

FOR MAC USERS:

Download a plug-in extension for a Json reader.  Once installed it will organize the files into the form needed to follow the instructions for WINDOWS.

For WINDOWS USERS: You will also need a plug-in for a Json reader. Firefox browser has it already, Chrome will need the plug-in!

Locate the image you want to copy.  Make a note of the PAGE number.

Using the informazione sull’oggetto (blue I)   Scroll to the end.

Click on  IIIF MANIFEST Link

Now click Expand all. (if necessary)

When you arrive at the page with all the pink and blue script (json reader)

Press Ctrl F to open a search box. To search for your page number, i.e. ” 35″ — changing the 35 to whichever page number you need. The program will then jump to the page you need.

In some browsers you may need to use ” pag.35″.

There should now be a link ending in .jpg.  under “thumbnail: @id   

CLICK and your image will appear. 

Right click and ‘save image as’ –Perfect!

Finally:

Previously when searching marriage processetti it was useful to be able to view the images in MULTPLE format in order to SEE the cover pages and you can do this by clicking on the TV symbol and choosing GALLERIA.  Here the images are partially obscured by the antenati logo.  I believe this is to prevent multiple downloads.  All the images are the same so this is no longer an option. Yet!