FamilySearch Digital Book Collection Just Expanded Their Audience
Contributed By R. Scott Lloyd, Church News staff writer
The vast digital historical book collection of FamilySearch, the Church’s free internet family history service, now has a broader audience.
Article Highlights
- Digital Public Library of America now incorporates metadata from FamilySearch.
- DPLA aspires to reach people from all walks of life, past and present.
“We’re excited to see information about FamilySearch’s vast holdings more broadly circulated to those trained to collect, catalog, and distribute useful information.” —David Rencher, FamilySearch’s chief genealogy officer
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The vast digital historical book collection of FamilySearch, the Church’s free internet family history service, now has a broader audience, thanks to an agreement signed with the Digital Public Library of America.
The agreement was announced August 8 in connection with the American Library Association’s national conference in Orlando, Florida.
With the new partnership, the library will incorporate metadata from FamilySearch.org’s online digital book collection, making more than 200,000 family history library books discoverable through the association’s online search portal later this year.
From that portal, users will be able to access the books on FamilySearch.org.
The digital historical books at FamlySearch include genealogy and family history publications from the archives of some of the most important family history libraries in the world. The books include family histories, county and local histories, genealogy magazines and how-to books, gazetteers, medieval histories, and pedigrees. The collection grows each year by tens of thousands of new publications.
“We’re excited to see information about FamilySearch’s vast holdings more broadly circulated to those trained to collect, catalog, and distribute useful information,” said David Rencher, FamilySearch’s chief genealogy officer.
Dan Cohen, executive director of the Digital Public Library of America, said, “At DPLA, we aspire to collect and share cultural heritage materials that represent individuals, families, and communities from all walks of life across the country, past and present. The FamilySearch collection and our continued engagement with genealogists and family researchers is critical to help bring the stories represented in these treasured resources to life in powerful and exciting ways.”
FamilySearch teams up with the Digital Public Library of America to reach out to people from all walks of life, past and present.
