FamilySearch has improved the look of its Family History Books section, enhanced the search features, and renamed it, FamilySearch Digital Library. The genealogy organization calls it a launch, but it appears to be more of a re-design and new interface than a new site.
Still, no matter what it’s called, this launch makes the site better and it gives us an opportunity to explore and re-discover the online books.
The FamilySearch collection of books includes family histories, county and local histories, genealogy magazines and how-to books, gazetteers, medieval histories, and pedigrees from around the world.
The Digital Library can be found in the drop-down menu under the Search tab and, for the time being, is still called Books.
I have often searched for family names and ancestral towns in FamilySearch’s Books, but the new design drew me to certain features that may be new, or had escaped my attention in the past.
Libraries
To build its online collection, FamilySearch has partnered with nine American libraries, Allen County Public Library Genealogy Center, Arizona State Library, Birmingham Public Library, Dallas Public Library, Historical Society of Pennsylvania, Midwest Genealogy Center, Onondaga County Public Library, St. Louis County Library, and University of Florida George A. Smathers Libraries.
The library, however, is not limited to the nine partners. To see dozens of libraries, including Canadian institutions, such as the University of Alberta, University of Toronto, and University of Ottawa, select Owning Institution in the left margin after conducting a search of keywords.
Use quotation marks around full names
Searching for ancestors’ names or towns on the re-designed site is a model of simplicity. All you need to do is enter a family name or town name in the Search box. There is no need for an advanced searched because of the filters in the left margin.
When entering a first and last name, use quotation marks, such as “Louis Houde,” to limit the results to books that have both names together. Without quotation marks, you will find books that have Louis on one page and Houde on another.
If overwhelmed by the number of results, use the filters in the left margin (illustrated above) to refine your search.
Some of the books are Public and available to read in their entirety online. Others are identified as Protected due to copyright restrictions.
The Full text results feature is useful for looking at both Public and Protected books. In either case, it provides a view of the sentence or paragraph where your search terms appear.
If only interested in looking at books that are available to read online, change Access Level in the left margin to Public.
Viewing a snippet of the text in Full text results helps you decide whether or not the book may be relevant to your family history. In the case of the text below, this is what appears for a Protected book.
To view pages in a book in the Digital Library, you need to set up a free FamilySearch account, which takes about a minute to complete and requires no financial information.
You can conduct searches without an account. Only when you click on View Pages in a book will you be directed to sign in or set up an account.
Consider as hints
Take note that not everything written in these family histories is accurate. As you do with online trees, consider the information as hints, and validate or disprove it with other sources.
90% of the returns I got were only available at an LDS library. The remaining 10% were not for my surname, rather an item of the same name. I’ve searched there many times but so far no book of any sort has contained my ancestor’s surname.