The Family History Library - in Salt Lake City and Near You

The Family History Library in Salt Lake City contains a huge amount of information of interest to family genealogists, including you. What's more, if a trip to Utah isn't your cup of tea, you may find that you can get to this information within a short ride from your home.

The Library is owned and operated by the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints, usually referred to as "the Mormons." However, the Library itself operates in a non-denominational manner. Church employees and many volunteers collect records from all over the world, regardless of the religion of the people involved. Likewise, everyone is invited to use the Library in Salt Lake City, regardless of religious beliefs. In fact, only a minority of the Library's daily visitors are Mormons. Visitors are never asked for their religious affiliation and are never asked to read or listen to any religious materials.

The Salt Lake City Family History Library is the largest genealogy library in the world. It is open to the general public at no charge. More than 2,000 patrons visit the library every day. Many travel from distant lands to use the Library's materials.

The Library's resources include the following vast collections:

• More than 2.4 million rolls of microfilmed genealogical records
• 742,000 sheets of microfiche
• 310,000 books, serials, and other publications
• 4,500 periodicals

The majority of the records contain information about persons who lived before 1920. Records available are from the United States, Canada, the British Isles, Europe, Latin America, Asia, and Africa. The Library has overseen the filming of records in more than 100 countries, territories, and possessions.

The Church stores the master copies of all these microfilms and fiche in its Granite Mountain storage facility. This massive vault is literally built into a mountainside, about 25 miles from downtown Salt Lake City. In this subterranean complex workers make copies of films and fiche for use at the Family History Library and elsewhere.

Travel to Salt Lake City can be expensive and time-consuming. Luckily, you do not need to travel all the way to Utah to use the resources of this great library. The Family History Library has a vast system of more than 3,500 branch libraries, known as Family History Centers ("FHCs" for short), to help people search for the records of their ancestors. The FHCs operate in 88 countries, where more than 100,000 rolls of microfilm are circulated from Granite Mountain every month. Chances are very good that one of these FHCs is convenient to anyone reading this article. For example, there are more than 60 FHCs in Florida alone!

Most of the local Family History Centers are small, filling a room or two. While your local FHC cannot hold all the millions of records of the main Library, the staff can order any records of interest from Salt Lake City. These records include vital, census, land, probate, immigration, and church records, as well as many other records of genealogical value. There is a modest charge of $5.50 for each reel of microfilm or collection of microfiche that you order. It usually takes less than three weeks to fill your order. Once your rentals arrive, they remain available for your use for several more weeks, and you can stop in at your convenience to view the films on the center's microfilm and microfiche viewers. If you need help using a viewer, you simply ask a staff member. The microfilms cannot be removed from the FHC. Eventually, the rented records are returned to Salt Lake City.

Many of the records available have been transcribed to computers in the past decade. Each Family History Center has at least one computer; larger centers have multiple computers. Each computer has access to millions of records stored on CD-ROM disks or online. Anyone can use these computers, free of charge. You do not have to be a computer expert to use them; the staff provides assistance for computer novices and genealogy novices alike. Understandably, these computers are quite popular, so you may have to reserve computer time in advance.

The local centers also provide research outlines that help you zero in on resources from the locations where your ancestors lived. These outlines give detailed advice about how to do genealogical research in a specific state or country, emphasizing what information may be available through the Family History Library. The Family History Library has research outlines for each of the fifty United States, the District of Columbia, most U.S. territories and possessions, each province of Canada, and dozens of foreign countries.

The use of any Family History Center is free; the only charge you might incur is the rental fee for any records you order from the Salt Lake vault. The public is always welcome. These centers are staffed and funded by local Church congregations and are usually located in Church buildings, but a few local centers are in rented quarters elsewhere. Church and community volunteers are on hand to answer questions and lend assistance. The volunteers at these centers often are a mix of Mormons and non-Mormons alike. I recently met a Jewish gentleman who volunteers many hours every week at a local Mormon Family History Center. He reports that it has been a great experience and he thoroughly enjoys it.

If you are concerned that someone at a FHC will impose their religion on you, then don't be! You will get religious information only if you ask for it. If you happen to ask a Jewish or non-Mormon Christian volunteer, he or she will probably refer you to someone else for answers.

Your religious beliefs will not be an issue, and no missionaries will ever come to your door because you used one of their facilities.

When you start on your family tree research project, you certainly will want to use the facilities of your local FHC. Do not make the mistake of many beginning genealogists by assuming that, just because information is on the Web, or just because it is printed in a book, it's a fact. Always draw your conclusions after you view surviving documents (birth, marriage, death, christening, burial, church, military, land, probate, courthouse, census, etc.). Microfilm copies of many of these original records are available through your local Family History Center. Your local FHC can save you bundles in travel dollars!

You probably have a local center within easy driving distance of your home. To locate your nearest Family History Center, look at http://www.familysearch.org/Eng/Library/FHC/frameset_fhc.asp. Then see what discoveries await you there.

Comments

[Ann Aniello]

I'm a non-Mormon volunteer in our local Family History Center and previously volunteered in a FHC in another state. I can attest that no ever tries to impose their religious beliefs on anyone. I think many people believe they cannot use the FHC if they aren't Mormon. They're missing a huge treasure, because many of the resources the Family History Center has cannot be found anywhere else, even from the Internet. My own personal research took off when I started using the films from the FHC. By-the-way, our rental fees are $6.00 per film. Microfiche are still $.15 each.

[Ann Amadori]

In our Family History Center in Virginia the $5.50 fee is for the first 30 day "rental". Another $5.50 adds 60 days and a third $5.50 allows the film to stay in that center indefinitely. I believe this is the policy elsewhere also.

[Dick Eastman]

I believe some local Family History Centers add an extra fifty cents or so to the fees to pay for the postage of the post card that is mailed to you when the microfilms you ordered are received.
- Dick Eastman

[Eric Head]

In some instances, local Historical libraries may act as a branch of the FHL. The McClung Historical Collection of the Knox County, Tennessee Public Library acts as just such a branch. Microfilm can be checked out and viewed at the library location with big advantages such as more extensive hours of use, more local and regional genealogical resources, more computers available with access to genealogical materials, etc.... The McClung does not appear as a "branch" on the Family Search website so it may pay to contact the local history library if your community has one to see if they act as a branch of the FHL.

[Ed Richard, Denver, CO]

This article and blogs are right on. Some FH centers are quite small and cannot keep the film on indenfinite loan. Others such as the moderately sized one in Aurora Colarado still space for another 1000 or so reels on indefinite loan. Oakland and Los Angesles California, and Manhatten, New York are huge and have large collections of films on Indefinite loan, (donated by patrons.) Which others are huge?

Check your local centers for hours and size of facilities. Some in the Denver area have a number of readers and computers for the patrons, others are small, have limited hours, and computers may have to be reserved.

The Denver Public library also can order films for the patrons as in the Knox County Tennesse public library. What about your public library.

The extensive book collection in Salt Lake City is not availabla on inter library loan of FHC loan. So to access the books, we have to go to the genealogical "candy shop" to research in the superb collection of books, maps, etc. SLC is a great getaway and always provides some good information each day.

ETR

[Melvyn Gillette]

I have easy access to the large Oakland FHC, but went to Salt Lake City in March for the first time. I spent the majority of my time in the non-circulating books.The Historical Society for the county where 3 of my 4 grandparents were born and I grew up has been busy and much of their work is on the shelves in Salt Lake. I was in hog heaven...toot

[GST]

The Family History Library Cataloge is available online at www.familysearch.org you can use the library cataloge at home and decide what microfilm you would like to view then go to one of 4000 local Family History Centers to order the microfilm. Most films are only indexed by place and date of materials. The Chruch has 200 camara crews out full time filming vital records. They have been filming vital records for years in every country they can get into. The Chruch has been extracting indexes to this information for many years, they have just obtained high speed scanners and are now planning to digitize the entire collection of microfilm and make it available at familysearch.org this project with 32 high speed scanners will take 10 years just to scan all these microfilms. The scanned images will be posted online as they become available. They also are asking for volenteers to help index all these scanned documents at www.familysearchindexing.org New microfilmed vital records are coming into the library system in the thousands of rolls per year. In the next 2 years all camara crews will be converted to digital and the records will then be available online much quicker.

[Ray Young]

In addition to the Family History Centers and Library, there is a staff of people on duty during the week for Research Support. They are to assist patrons in their research efforts and direct them to specific resources that maybe of help. They do not do research (and ruin all the fun for you) but suggest sources and places to search, both in and out of the FH Library System. They can be reached at 801-240-4754, 1-800-346-6044 or 1-866-406-1830 by phone (you always talk to real person). E-mail and regular mail addresses are available at local Family History Centers.

[Ray Young]

The Email address for Research Support described above is
familyhistory@support.familysearch.org

Regular mail inquiries may be addressed to the
Family History Library
35 N. West Temple
Salt Lake City UT 84150

[Nancy Van Wagner]

I sent a message Friday of last week. Did you get the message. I said I'm going to be in SLC Dec. 17 -Jan 3. I wanted several films so I could do research on ny ancestors from Cairano and Andretta, Italy. I trust you got my message if not the numbers are as follows Andretta 1388997 and 1388998. The ones for Cairano are 1448637 item 5, 1448638, 1448639, and 1742108. I would appreciate it greatly if I could also have help from Ruth Merriman the lady that helps with Italian Research thaty I met last year.

Thank you in advance for any help you can give me.

Sincerely

Nancy Van Wagner and Julia Mercaldo
31019 Dorchester 179
New Hudson, Michigan 48165
tel. home 248-486-7748
cel. ph. 248-943-6041