Though the interface could have used a bit more debugging and some of the duplication should have been eliminated, as an index of Australian Vital Records this one is pretty good.

The Australian Vital Records Index has been available for some time, yet, I have not seen a comprehensive review of it on the Internet. This CD was produced by the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints and is said to contain some 4.5 million records of births, christenings, marriages, and deaths from 4 states of Australia, New South Wales (1788-1888); Tasmania (1803-1899); Victoria (1837-1888); and Western Australia (1841-1905). It does not contain information from Queensland, South Australia, or t he Northern Territory.

My rating system for software is based on 4 criteria:

• 1. Utility - Rating the usability of the features and functions of the software and database.
• 2. Completeness - Are the needs of the end user being met through its use?
• 3. Advantages - In what ways does it provide a better tool for genealogy research?
• 4. Limitations - What are the inadequacies and shortcomings of the software and database.

Utility - The Utility of the AVR is 2 out of 4 stars, average. The AVR CD installed easily enough. After the install I quickly discovered that the buttons on the Main Menu screen didn't work correctly. When the buttons were programmed it appears the programmer miscalculated where the buttons would be displaying on the screen. Therefore, to get any of the search entry screens to display you must click about an inch below and inch to the right of the button you want. That's just an approximation as your screen resolution may cause that measurement to vary.

The Search interface was adequate to do a variety of searches. The four CDs are indexed alphabetically, for instance CD #1 contains the last names A-D, CD #2 contains the index to the last names E-K, CD #3 is L-Q and CD 4 is R-Z. A caution, when you have completed a search and you want to do another search over a different CD, wait for the program to tell you to replace the CD or it will crash the program. Another irritating glitch in the program is when a new CD is placed in the drive for the program t o read, the load CD box had to be clicked repeatedly or the CD device wouldn't read the disk. I tried the software on a variety of computers with the same result.

I was disappointed in the Help screens especially because Help did not provide an explanation for the place abbreviations used in the Event Place field. For instance, I had to guess that Winc and Win'sea were abbreviations for Winchelsea.

It is not possible to execute a search over a smaller data set than the entire CD Index. So it was difficult to narrow the search sufficiently on very common names. The Display of the data, however, made it easy to copy and paste the search result to a word processor so I could use the word processor search function.

Though the printing feature is functional it was easier to copy and paste the data from the display and print from my word processor. I was also disappointed that I couldn't output the data in GEDCOM format. This meant that I had to enter the data by hand into my genealogy program.

Completeness - Rating for the Completeness of the AVR is 4 out of 4 stars. It is very complete as an Index for the states included.
I tested the AVR in two ways for completeness and found that about 70% of the individuals from these states and time periods of this index are found in it. I achieved good results when I randomly chose a group of people with the same surname and attempted to build a family tree. One weakness of the index is that the death record does not include the spouse of the deceased. This made building the family tree a bit more difficult especially when searching for the death records of females.

The second way I tested the completeness of the index was to choose a pedigree with known Australian roots from this time period and search for their names in the AVR. Using the AVR I added a substantial number of families to the pedigree. Testing in this way I was about 80% successful in locating marriage, birth, christening, and death records.

The index is said to contain some 4.5 million records. The population of Australia in the 1820s was about 20,000 people and by 1850 it had reached 400,000. From 1851 to 1860, 600,000 immigrants more than doubled the population and in the 1880s another 320,000 immigrants arrived. If we assume there were about 2 million people in Australia during this time period, then this Index would represent the vast majority of the vital records for the period.

Advantages -
The price cannot be beat at $9 US, and the AVR can be found in many Family History Centers around the country and in Australia. However, the AVR is not available for sale in Australia. The nearest alternative for the AVR would be the Pioneer Indexes available for each state separately at a much greater cost than this one index. These separate indexes are available at many Australian Libraries. An obvious advantage to the AVR over separate indexes is that you can search all of the states simultaneously.

Limitations -

• 1. AVR not available for sale in Australia
• 2. Spouse not listed in Death Record
• 3. Abbreviations for places listed in the Event fields were not consistent and were not explained anywhere in the software.
• 4. Software not able to output GEDCOM format of data.
• 5. Exact spelling of names is required for automatic searching. Wild card searches can be done but are very time consuming.
• 6. Some duplication of names.

Review written by Cindy Carman