FamilySearch

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FamilySearch is a family history website provided by The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints. It provides its resources free of charge to the public and is one of the preeminent genealogy sites on the Internet.

Contents

[edit] Resources

The primary resources offered by FamilySearch are searchable databases, research guidance, and the catalog of the Family History Library.

FamilySearch provides online access to several databases, which together contain over one billion names.

  • Ancestral File, a database of user-contributed data that has been replaced by the Pedigree Resource File mentioned below.
  • Census indexes for the 1880 U.S., 1881 British Isles, and 1881 Canadian censuses.
  • The International Genealogical Index (IGI), which contains data contributed by individuals as well as indexes of original records.
  • Pedigree Resource File, an index to user-contributed family trees that are uploaded to the FamilySearch site.
  • U.S. Social Security Death Index, which contains vital statistics for over 70 million deceased individuals.
  • Vital Records Index, which includes Denmark, Finland, Mexico, Norway, and Sweden.

The website offers two types of research assistance. The Research Guidance service is an online wizard that offers detailed research advice to a user based on his or her answers to a series of questions. Research Helps are research guides that can be read online or, in many cases, downloaded as a PDF. There are dozens, if not hundreds, of guides available covering many geographic areas and most types of genealogical records.

The catalog of the Family History Library is also available at FamilySearch. The library is located in Salt Lake City, Utah, and holds genealogical records for over 110 countries, territories, and possessions. Its collections include over 2.4 million rolls of microfilmed genealogical records; 742,000 microfiche; 310,000 books, serials, and other formats; and 4,500 periodicals. The microfilm and microfiche records can be ordered and viewed at over 4,000 library branches (called Family History Centers) worldwide.

[edit] History of the website

  • May 1999: Website first opened to the public. It almost immediately went offline; overloaded due to extreme popularity.
  • October 1999: Surpassed 1.5 billion hits.
  • November 1999: 240 million names added, bringing the total number of entries to 640 million.[1]
  • November 2005: New FamilySearch.org enters first Beta test.
  • Feburary 2007: New FamilySearch.org enters Beta 2 testing.

[edit] Future of the website

Significant changes are forthcoming for FamilySearch.

[edit] Austro-Hungarian Map project

The LDS Church is a partner in a project to create an "easy-to-use digital gazetteer" that "will enable users to find and view scanned ...images from 1877-1914 Austro-Hungarian topographic maps."[2] When completed, this gazetteer will be integrated with the FamilySearch databases, allowing users to click on a place name in the Austro-Hungarian Empire and retrieve a historical map.[3]

[edit] Integration with BYU Family History Archive

Brigham Young University in Provo, Utah is digitizing copyright-free family histories and placing them online.[4] Links to the digitized books are being added to the Family History Library catalog at FamilySearch.

[edit] New FamilySearch

The LDS Church is currently (June 28, 2006) developing a web application for membership (and, eventually, everyone) to be able to interact with a very large, unified database full of connected genealogical information. When fully released, it will replace the current FamilySearch.org.

Most of the development work on the new system takes place in offices in the Joseph Smith Memorial Building on Temple Square, Salt Lake City, Utah.

Some prominent features of the new website are:

  • Support for multiple assertions on facts, allowing people to "agree to disagree".
  • Very comprehensive source citations, including links to source images. This promised linking service may not be available in earlier versions. Documents scanned from the Church's 2.4 million rolls of microfilmed vital records, from around the world, will eventually be linked to individuals in the system. These films are currently being scanned and indexed, for more details see the Churches FamilySearchIndexing web site.
  • Several features will be specific to the membership of the LDS Church, facilitating temple ordinance work.
  • This new system will be a one world pedigree of linked families. It will operate wiki style with anyone able to add their comments and information. Users will not be able to change others entries but may post their disagreements next to other's versions. Users will be able to edit their own prior entries.
  • The Beta2 test version has a mapping utility which maps locations where an individual has resided. By clicking on the link a pop up displays the events that took place at that location, i.e.: birth, marriage, death, etc.
  • The new system will be released in phases starting with smaller temple districts for members of the Church only. After temple districts in all areas of the world are online, it will be opened to everyone.

[edit] Digitization and indexing projects

The Family History Library (FHL) is in the process of digitizing its entire microfilm collection. ScanStone, which was developed by the LDS Church, is a system (both hardware and software) to rapidly create digital images of genealogical records contained on microfilm. When fully implemented, the FHL will be able to convert 370,000 rolls of microfilm per year into digital images. It is estimated that the digitizing project will be completed about 2012.[3]

An online index to the digitized records is also being created using FamilySearch Indexing software developed by the LDS Church. The church hopes to recruit tens of thousands of volunteers to complete the indexing project. Volunteers can participate by going to the Church's FamilySearchIndexing web site. The databases containing the digital images and indexes will be added to the FamilySearch website as they become available.

[edit] References

  1. ^ News release (16 November 1999) — 240 Million New Names Added to FamilySearch.org
  2. ^ Building a Globally Distributed Historical Sheet Map Set of Austro-Hungarian Topographic Maps, 1877-1914
  3. ^ a b A Sneak Peak at the Near Future
  4. ^ BYU Family History Archive

[edit] See also

[edit] External links

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