Issue 9.14
For some time now FamilySearch has been working with other companies to share records and make their records available to members of The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints for free. So far, FamilySearch.org has signed agreements with Ancestry.com based in Provo, Utah, with FindMyPast.com owned by Brightsolid based in the British Isles, and MyHeritage.com which is a company based in the beautiful village of Bnei Atarot, near Tel Aviv, Israel.
These companies will soon grant LDS Church members free access to their commercial sites and family history records. This is unprecedented free access to genealogy records. As a subscriber to these sites, this will save me alone, hundreds of dollars each year. This will allow more people to build, preserve and share their family trees online. LDS Church members will be granted free subscriptions to Ancestry.com’s world edition, MyHeritage.com’s plus subscription, and FindMyPast.com’s plus subscription, accessible from any location. That means free access at home!
Don Anderson, a senior vice president of patron and partner services at FamilySearch, announced that for the general public, free access would also be available to anyone who visits any of the LDS Church family history centers worldwide. FamilySearch is working to make doing family history easier and more accessible.
Access to all of these records will substantially expand the records available for FamilySearch users. Anderson said, “This will not only save money, but it will dramatically broaden the number of individuals involved in family history who otherwise wouldn’t have gotten involved or found records at these sites because it wasn’t in FamilySearch.”
The records are not available yet as the agreements, logistics and knowledge articles about how this is going to work are still being approved, but it is estimated that these records should be available in the second quarter of 2014. Now is a really good time to get into genealogy by visiting http://familysearch.org and start building your own Family Tree. Link the sources already available in FamilySearch.org/search and get ready to have access never before available for free!
For more information contact Shanna Jones shannasjones@msn.com 435.628.4900.