And I honestly don't know if they send actual books out of Salt
Lake. But I doubt it.
I don't think so, either, but one of the librarians at my local FHC said that you can get them to photocopy selections for you (as long as there are no copyright problems--i.e., they won't photocopy the whole book for you, but they can do the index, I think, and then they can copy additional pages for you.)
But sometimes they will mention a book that you also
can find in the public libraries that have a genealogy collection.
What I have done with much success in this regard is look up books from the FHL catalog on interlibrary loan, and ordered them through my local library. I have a university affiliation, so I use that, but you can also do it through your regular public library. Once the American copies of a title were not available, so a library in Germany lent the book to me through the system! You can also just do a keyword search for your place name on an interlibary loan search (Worldcat) and see what comes up. Look for Familienb�cher and Ortsippenb�cher.
Also, if you look up the web page for the city you want, they sometimes list additional printed resources you can check. I found some great material that way. Most German cities' web addresses are like this: www.[cityname].de. (Of course, if there are more than one by the same name, you have to do a google search.)
As to ordering films from the FHC, I have to say that the best sources of information I've found are church books, and the easiest way to access them is on microfilm. Sometimes a child's birth entry will list parents' full names, grandparents, which order of birth a child is, etc. Godparents can often be close family members, and they will be listed, sometimes mentioning their relationship to the child or to other people in town. There aren't as many church books on film for northern Germany as there are down south, so you are lucky if you have one for your area.
Rose Green
(researching HARTWIG and BRUNYER/BRUNIGES)