Tag Archives: Tools & Tech: FamilySearch

FamilySearch has all sorts of genealogy-related materials digitized and available online. From records to books, there’s a lot to peruse. One section of their website is the FamilySearch Digital Library, which has oodles of digitized books. This is a great place to find all sorts of genealogy-related books, such as family histories, county histories, and more. In this video I’ll show you how to find, view, and download digital books from the FamilySearch Digital Library. P.S. I talk about the different access levels in this video. For more details, see:  […]

I have a weekly calendar entry that reminds me to check out the new records that have been added to the major genealogy websites. When I find something of interest, I investigate it further and if it’s worthwhile I add it to my locality guide(s). I do this even when I don’t have a subscription to a website. Why? Because I may find that there are enough relevant collections on a website that are worth the cost of a subscription for a little while. Or, I might be able to […]

I’m not sure how I missed this, but I just learned that FamilySearch now has a place for researchers to gather virtually to help one another. Simply called Groups, you can access this by logging in to the FamilySearch website, then under the Help menu, choose Community. From that page, click the Groups button. You can browse through the listings or search on a topic or location. So far, I have joined four groups: German Genealogy Research Belgium, Luxembourg, and The Netherlands Ireland Genealogy Research Midwest I think this is […]

About two hours ago, I blogged about a change to the FamilySearch/FHL catalog that was a little disappointing. It had to do with a new option to filter results by choosing “Online” or “Family History Center” (which with “Family History Library selected shows you everything in the entire catalog, online and off). You can read about it here. My point was simple: I didn’t like the fact that “Online” was the default (meaning to see everything in the catalog, you’d have to change the filter every time—and if you weren’t […]

Update: This problem has been fixed! See FamilySearch/FHL Catalog: Ask & You Shall Receive? Searching the FamilySearch/FHL catalog earlier, I made an interesting discovery, and not a pleasant one, mainly because I thought I was losing my mind! I don’t know when this change happened, but I’m glad I caught it because it impacts the search results. At the bottom, there is now an option to select “Online” or “Family History Center.” The default is “Online,” which presents a problem—you won’t see everything in the Family History Library’s (FHL) collection. […]

If you’re like me, you anxiously await the weekly email from FamilySearch that lists all the new historical records added to their online collection. When FamilySearch recently announced the discontinuation of lending microfilms to Family History Centers, I caught mention that all films that had been lent in the past few years were now digitized. Now, I know I’ve rented my share of films and I swear I haven’t seen any of those records come through in the weekly email. I even went out and checked the Historical Record Collections—nope, […]

Took a break from things a little bit ago and indexed a batch of Chicago church records for FamilySearch.  Moments after submitting my batch, I received an email indicating that I had reached a “significant and rare milestone” of 1,000 batches indexed.  I had no idea I’d done that.  I’m guessing the bulk of it was from the 1940 census.

If you have family that lived in South Dakota, and you haven’t already checked out the state censuses for 1905 to 1945, you must head over to FamilySearch and do so now! For each of these five censuses, each person is enumerated on their own card that contains a ton of useful information.  The 1905 census has great information, but 1915-1945 uses the same card that has fantastic information, including wife’s maiden name, year or marriage, and military service (with details).