More Web Site Service Providers Team with FamilySearch

FamilySearch is announcing still more content providers that will be offering data through local FamilySearch Centers near you and through the Family History Library in Salt Lake City. Note that all the providers listed below except for two have been announced previously in this newsletter and elsewhere. The new additions are: Heritage Quest/ProQuest and Kindred Konnections.

The following announcement was written by FamilySearch (formerly Genealogical Society of Utah), a nonprofit organization sponsored by The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints:

Popular web sites available for free through local Family History Centers

SALT LAKE CITY, UTAH-FamilySearch has announced the addition of more popular online genealogy services available for free through worldwide family history centers. The expanded services are in keeping with FamilySearch's goal to provide increased access to records that will assist individuals in family history pursuits. New resources include:

Footnote (www.footnote.com)

Footnote is a subscription-based website that features searchable, original documents that provide users a view of the events, places and people that shaped the American nation and the world. The site will have over 25 million digital images by the end of 2007. Footnote is currently working with FamilySearch to index the American Revolutionary War Pension files. Additional projects with FamilySearch are under development.

Individuals with Footnote subscriptions will be able to sign in with the same Footnote username and password they use at home in order to save, annotate, and upload content.

Godfrey Memorial Library (www.godfrey.org)

Godfrey Memorial Library has an extensive collection of essential resources to assist genealogical and historical research. Resources include newspapers, city and business directories, vital records, printed census records, state, county, and local histories, as well as numerous family histories, family bible records, and service and pension records.

Heritage Quest/ProQuest (www.heritagequestonline.com)

Heritage Quest online includes the complete set of U.S. Federal Census images from 1790 to 1930 including names and indexes for many of the sets. Users will be able to find people and places located in over 20,000 published family and local histories and PERSI, an index of over 1.9 million genealogy and local history articles. Other online databases include Revolutionary War Pension, Bounty-Land Warrant Application files, and the Freedman Bank Records.

Access to this service will be limited to 1,400 family history centers in North America. Patrons should contact their local family history center to see if this service is available. Family history center directors should contact Family History Center Support with questions.

Kindred Konnections (www.kindredkonnections.com)

Kindred Konnections has over 230 million pedigree linked names with submitter information. The online pedigrees are not merged, but maintained by individual patrons. There are additional databases of birth, marriage, death, and census records that are automatically searched along with the pedigree linked data. Segments of pedigrees can be downloaded.

World Vital Records (www.worldvitalrecords.com)

World Vital Records provides access to research helps and has a wide variety of international records, including more than 60 parish registers, Scottish death records, UK marriages, and Irish prisoner records. There are more than 300 newspapers with 100,000 pages added a month, and over 500 online databases, including vital, military, land, pension records, reference materials, family histories, maps, gazetteers, and international coops. With the recent Quintin Publications partnership, World Vital Records will soon have more than 10,000 databases online. At least one new database is added every business day.

FamilySearch (formerly Genealogical Society of Utah) is a nonprofit organization sponsored by The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints. FamilySearch maintains the world's largest repository of genealogical resources accessed through FamilySearch.org, the Family History Library in Salt Lake City, and over 4,500 family history centers in 70 countries.

Comments

[Happy Dae]

What? Now Kindred Konnections, too?! Next thing you'll tell me is Mitt Romney has donated a few million dollars to FamilySearch, too. Wonderful times ahead for family researchers. I love it!

Happy Dae.
(apologies to Gov. Romney)

[Judith Arnn-Knight]

Considering the three nearest FHLs to me are open a combined 23 hours a week I think I will keep my personal subscriptions. It is really nice of them to provide the services but you are going to have to live in a metropolitan area or an area with a lot of LDS folks to take advantage of all this wonderful access. I do applaud their efforts--just wish the boonies had more opportunity to tak advantage of them. Now that I weigh the advantages of living in the boonies vs the numbers of people it would take to generate a big FHL my personal subscriptions look great!

judy arnn-knight

[Doug Plowman]

Hello:
It is great to see the cooperation between the various organizations. My main concern is the Family History Centers. The nearest one for me is about 75 miles away. The hours opened to the public is very limited and with the cost of gas it is hard to justify the cost. If the library were opened more hours instead of only 6 hours at a time it would be more practical for users. I am thankful our little public library and local genealogy society has made arrangements to be able to use FHL microfilms at our library.

[Betty Schulz]

Does everyone know that non-LDS (Mormon) people volunteer at the Family History Centers? The FHS near me has one LDS member who is the library director and all volunteers are non-LDS people. They are happy to have volunteers, and the more volunteers the more hours they can be open.
You give and you shall receive:-)

[Steve]

Dick:

A question regarding The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints. How did they originally get all their genealogy records? I know they have millions of them but I have never seen an article or website that explains how they got them.

Can you elaborate or direct me to an article.

Thanks

[Dave]

In my experience, the Family History Centers are open to meet the demand. Perhaps with all the recent happennings, more people will be interested in attending the FHCs, and patrons can request more hours.

[Joan Armistead]

My experience with FHC in Fairfax County, VA- there are many libraries and they have extended hours. I have recently moved to St Mary's Co Maryland and there is one library that is open for a few hours one evening and a few hours during two days and most of the workers are from the genealogy society and are not Church members and they have few computers. It akes a BIG difference where you live!

[Sarah Sheffield]

Dick, perhaps you can clarify this point: I thought when it said all these things would be eventually on Familysearch.com, it didn't mean just the computers at the LDS center, but also accessible to the public FROM HOME? Is that not your understanding?
Regarding where the LDS gets its records, my understanding is that they get them directly from the holding source. For instance, if a church holds the record, they ask permission to film it, and provide a copy of the film to the church as well. If a source has not been filmed, you can call the LDS church/library, and ask that they request a filming (at least this used to be the process.)The source can always refuse.

[Tricia]

Steve - A good place to start is the official site of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints http://lds.org/portal/site/LDSOrg and click on FAMILY HISTORY. The Genealogical Society of Utah in collaboration with the "Mormon" Church began microfilming records in 1938 and currently has records from more than 100 countries. Here is their url: http://www.gensocietyofutah.org/
Also, there was a recent article describing the process of scanning and indexing the 5 billion documents housed in the Granite Mountain vaults at: http://www.deseretnews.com/dn/print/1,1442,660205784,00.html

Tricia

[Kathy]

About the LDS records being accessible at home -- Those records are not yet available but millions of records are being indexed each month by volunteers (anyone can volunteer at www.familysearchindexing.org)
The recent announcements are about subscription services that will be offered for free at the FHCs, similar to subscription services you might receive for free at your local library.

[Woody Hardman]

As a volunteer and director at two FHC's over the years and now also serving as an indexer, I found the foregoing comments collectively to be amusing. Some are wondering how the LDS church acquired so many records, others seem concerned about a variety of problems. Some are not aware obviously, that since the inception of the filming in 1938 or whatever, the LDS church has always provided the latest technological equipment and all of the work has been provided by service volunteers who pay their own 'away from home' expenses. The cost to equip and staff the FHC's around the world has the same formula. Mitt did not have to donate anything to make this possible! Incidentally, I have sat in our FHC many complete shifts with no patrons showing at all. The work is delightful and it is a great asset made available free to all of the general public.

[Dick Eastman]

---> Dick, perhaps you can clarify this point: I thought when it said all these things would be eventually on Familysearch.com, it didn't mean just the computers at the LDS center, but also accessible to the public FROM HOME? Is that not your understanding?

These services will be available from the FamilySearch Centers (formerly called Family History Centers) around the world and from the Family History Library in Salt Lake City at no charge.

Most of the services, but not all, will be available from home for modest fees but probably not for free. One exception is HeritageQuest Online which is only available through subscribing libraries. The above announcement also specifically states that HeritageQuest Online "will be limited to 1,400 family history centers in North America." Obviously, the family history centers on other continents will not have that access.

I don't remember any announcements stating that these services would be available via the www.Familysearch.org website. Most of the announcements did refer to the FamilySearch CENTERS around the world.

- Dick Eastman

[Marilynn B]

Re FHC hours: I am a consultant in the local FHC in a rural town of northern California. The problem of what days and hours to open and then keeping it staffed is an ongoing one. We don't have a lot of patrons and there doesn't seem to be any day of the week or time of day that would cater to most people.

To add to the quandary, especially since most of our volunteers are women, church leaders are very concerned about having the building open to the public with a lone staff member on site. Our bishop requires that at least two of us be there, but that is not always practicable. I have a few times opened the door to someone looking for a handout and on occasion there have been cardboard and blankets found in the bushes by the building.

Our door sign does give a phone number for those wishing to arrange an appointment outside regular hours, something that those of you whose FHC is open at odd times might suggest they do.

[Nora Nell Thompson]

AS a volunteer at a more rural Family History Center, we found that once Ancestry no longer provided their data free of charge, we had a big drop off in patrons. I am sure that once word gets out of these new "partnerships", our people will come back.

Yes, it is true that most of the patrons and even lots of the volunteers are not members of the LDS church.
We had just recently expanded our hours and then the Ancestry thing happened. We are trying to maintain our same hours in hopes that things will pick up shortly.

I was not aware that the Family History Centers have had a change of name to Family Search Centers. It does make sense though. We truly are living in exciting times, especially if you are interested in Family History.

[Susan Daily]

As Betty mentioned, FHCs have non-LDS members who volunteer, too. I am one of those. I wanted to use my FHC and they were not opened at a time convenient to me. I asked them if I came in Thursdays from 9-1, would they stay open? They said yes, and so I volunteer with an LDS member. Over the past year, it has now become that only our time is when the center is open! If they did not have me, who knows what would happen. So, please, consider volunteering your time for a few hours a week to your local FHC! (Or FSC, now! ;-)

[Cathy]

Congratulations to all you volunteers who have continued to keep the Family History Centers (FHC) open! My FHC was closed for almost two years until they could find some volunteers. When it re-opened, I volunteered for the Saturday morning shifts every week. Now, if I wasn't there every Saturday for the past four years, they would have to close on Saturdays. And I'm NOT an LDS church member. I'm just an addicted genealogist!

The addition of these subscription services will be a great boon to the FHC now that Ancestry has pulled out.

We've not lost any patrons yet at my locat FHC but I've made my own subscription to Ancestry available to any patrons in the FHC while I'm there.