IGI continued

Taking up where I left off last time – Hugh Wallis has made an exhaustive search of the likely ranges of IGI batch numbers and created a database of those numbers and the source records that they apply to. For each batch he has extracted the church or chapel (if specified), town, county and country names and then organised them by country and county and created this freepages website . He has also included a hotlink from each batch number to the actual search engine provided at http://www.familysearch.org/, including the ability to enter the surname you are looking for. This makes it very easy to search all the batches for a particular geographic location using just the last name you are searching for - something that is not possible directly from the LDS site without doing a lot of typing.
Hugh has found over 50,000 different batch numbers, which shows the enormity of the task that has been undertaken by the LDS and for which we as genealogists should be immensely grateful.
There are a few issues that researchers should take into account when using the IGI.
1. The International Genealogy Index (IGI) does not cover all parish records and you need to ascertain the coverage.
2. Some material on the IGI is the result of private researchers whose veracity is not known and is unsourced.
3. There are problems with Welsh records due to misunderstandings about the English surname / patronymic name mix.
4. The IGI has converted all dates to the Gregorian System which came into effect in 1752 in the British Empire.
These are not problems unique to the LDS Church Family History Centres and indeed all good researchers will always try to verify material they locate by accessing original material.