Digital Family History Book Collection Hits 200k!
A milestone 200,000 digital family history books are now online at the multi-library Family History Books collection at FamilySearch.org. The growing collection, which began in 2007, includes “family histories, county and local histories, genealogy magazines and how-to books, gazetteers, and medieval histories and pedigrees,” according to the landing page.
Last time I looked for books here, I found one on my Homer ancestors. This time around, I found another gem: a book of children’s stories written about these ancestors! Digitally-archived volumes like county and local histories, published family histories and others are so valuable because they are immediately accessible and because they are keyword-searchable. Try these keyword search strategies:
- Look for only a surname (in case the first name is written different ways or a different relative is mentioned).
- Search for the name of a neighborhood, street, church, school, business, type of work or other keywords that pertain to your family.
- Use the Advanced Search feature to focus your search for a keyword in a title, type of publication (periodical, etc).
Once you’re reading a book, you can click on the info icon (a circle with an “i” in it on the upper right) to see more information about the book, including source citation and copyright information.
While the number of volumes online skyrockets, the online Viewer for reading them is only gradually improving. Here’s a TIP from FamilySearch staffer Dennis Meldrum: “Safari does not work well with the Viewer.” Neither do mobile devices like the iPhone or iPad. “The Viewer works best with IE or Firefox. It also works with Chrome, but the Adobe Tools do not work. We are aware of the limitations of the Viewer and are working to replace it by the end of the year.”
Want to keep track of which genealogy books are on your shelf and which you’ve found online? Create an Evernote genealogy library! Click here to learn how to do that with books on your shelf, and then add additional titles with the links in Evernote. Sharpen your Evernote skills for genealogy by becoming a Genealogy Gems Premium member. This gives you a full year’s access to our Ultimate Evernote for Genealogy Education, with five (so far) full-length video classes for beginner to expert and five mini-sessions, too.
Find US Ancestors In These New Online Resources
See if you can find U.S. ancestors using these new online resources (many of them free!): U.S. Supreme Court cases; an African American research guide; newspapers serving Illinois, Iowa, North Carolina and Texas; orphan train riders and Rhode Island burials since...Breaking News: Microfilm Lending Expiration Date Extended
I’ve heard from many of you since publishing my interview with Diane Loosle, Director of Patron Services at FamilySearch on the topic of FamilySearch ending its microfilm lending program on August 31, 2017. As fate would have it, just as the interview published, the unexpected happened – microfilm ordering capability ceased. That was when emails like this one started to arrive in my inbox:
Last Monday there was a computer software upgrade (or downgrade as I call it) in the FamilySearch catalog system which now prevents ordering of a mass number of microfilms ahead of the deadline this week…I am not confused about what is going on. I volunteer at an FHC and to date we have ordered some 600 films to complete our collection (these records will never be digitized.) We have ordered all the vital records we can. We have more than 9000 films at our little FHC, but now we want to order the Naturalization records and the system says “Film #—- does not exist.” This is happening on a global scale and even with films we already own. German, Lithuanian, Swedish, Chicago, Sacramento, Dallas, you name the city, this error message is showing up…Since you had a conversation with Diane recently, is there a way you can share this with her and find out how we can address this stumbling block. This is now a week old…

Diane Loosle, Director of Patron Services at FamilySearch
“There was an update to the software that had unintended consequences in that it broke the online film ordering systems connection to the FamilySearch Catalog. People were unable to order the films they desired for a little less than one week. This timing of course was very unfortunate. The situation has been remedied in the software so orders have resumed and because of this issue, the decision has been made to extend the film ordering deadline by one week to September 7th to make up for the week that the software was down. We apologize for the inconvenience this has caused people and are anxious to ensure that they are able to order the films they desire. We now need everyone’s assistance to get the word out to their friends that if they experienced this issue in trying to order they will be able to get their orders in now.
Thanks for your help on this Lisa. This was an incredibly unfortunate event with timing which couldn’t have been worse. This is of course and evolving situation at this point. I will keep you posted if anything else changes. The software that we use for this is quite archaic, a real dinosaur in the technology world. We are literally praying that it will hold up under the additional load. While we don’t anticipate any further problems, it is possible, so I will keep you in the loop should anything happen” -Diane