The Family Tree
By Terence L. Day
Terence L. Day, genealogist and journalist, is on the Washington State University faculty. He welcomes e-mail at genealogy@moscow.com, or regular mail in care of the Tri-City Herald City newsroom, P.O. Box 2608, Tri-Cities, WA 99302-2608.
Center offers invaluable resource
This column was published April 1, 2001
If you have never visited the FamilySearch Web site of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints or haven't been there recently, it's time to tune your Internet browser to www.familysearch.org and take a look at the world's largest resource for genealogical research.
Since launching this Web site, the Mormon church has ambitiously expanded the service offered there.
FamilySearch can help everyone from the rankest beginner to professional genealogists. You can search for your ancestors, share your research with other genealogists and gain access to the resources of the Family History Center in Salt Lake City. Online services help you search the FHC's vast record collections; get step-by-step guidance on searching for your ancestors; view maps, forms, guides and other research helps; and find other Web sites with family history information.
The FamilySearch service for sharing information will help you find people with similar research interests and share information through e-mail collaboration lists. It will make it easy for you to make your family history information available to others, and to recommend or add a Web site to FamilySearch.
The Family History Library System feature will help you learn about facilities and services of the world's largest family history library; find a Family History Center near you (from which you can access many of the library's materials); search the Family History Library Catalog for records and resources; and identify opportunities for education to improve your research skills. Finally, FamilySearch offers a catalog from which you can order forms, publications and other items for a fee. And the popular Personal Ancestral File genealogical software can be downloaded for free.
The LDS Family History Library was founded in 1894 to gather genealogical records and assist members of the church in tracing their family histories. Today, it has the largest collection of its kind in the world. It is open to the general public at no charge.
The library is housed in a modern, five-story building that serves 2,400 patrons a day. It is adjacent to Temple Square in downtown Salt Lake City. The library contains more than 2.2 million rolls of microfilmed genealogical records, 742,000 microfiche, 300,000 books, 4,500 periodicals and the computerized Ancestral File database, which contains approximately 35.6 million lineagelinked names and the International Genealogical Index database, which contains approximately 600 million individual names. Genealogists usually refer to this as the IGI.
Records from the United States, Canada, the British Isles, Europe, Scandinavia, Latin America, Asia, Australia, New Zealand and Africa are available and the resource expands daily. In 1999, the holdings increased monthly by an average of 4,100 rolls of microfilm and 700 books. The library has more than 240 cameras microfilming records in nearly 44 countries. Most records are earlier than the 1920s.
The staff includes more than 230 full-time and part-time workers and nearly 200 well-trained volunteers. Some resources can be accessed on the Internet. Many more are available at more than 3,400 Family History Centers in 75 countries and territories. These are staffed by more than 25,000 volunteers.
Both the Family History Library and many of the local Family History Centers offer genealogy classes. Local centers usually have a modest collection of materials of local interest. From those, you may order and view microfilm from the library in Salt Lake. A nominal fee is charged to cover the cost of postage.
There are two Family History Centers in the Tri-Cities. One is at 895 W. Gage Blvd., Richland. It is open Tuesdays from 9 a.m. to noon and 6-9 p.m.; Wednesdays from 7-9 p.m.; Thursdays from 10 a.m. to noon and 7-9 p.m.; and by appointment at other times. The phone number is 628-8332. The other center is at 1314 Goethals, Richland. It is open Mondays and Saturdays, 9 a.m. to 5 p.m. and Tuesdays through Friday, 9 a.m. to 9 p.m. The phone number is 946-6637.