NARA announces closing of the Massachusetts' Civil War CMSRs

A CMSR is a Compiled Military Service Record.  These records represent and contain the service data of several tens of thousands of soldiers who served from Massachusetts in the Civil War.  The National Archives is participating in a digitization project with their partner fold3.com to scan or photograph those records.  They will still be serving up copies, but not providing CMSR files for review on-site.

NARA's announcement, courtesy of Rebecca Warlow :

"Fold3 will be digitizing the records as part of the ongoing work to digitize Civil War service records.  We have closed the records for use in the research room so that they can be flattened, arranged, assessed, and treated for conservation needs prior to imaging.  In order to continue to provide access to researchers, the Archives I staff will make paper copies for in-person patrons on a case-by-case basis and will respond to individual form requests by providing copies of the files as before."