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Sunday, May 29, 2011

Where are we with FamilySearch?

Let me start off with some observations and statistics both good and bad:
  • The Historical Record Collections now have 633 collections with untold millions (if not billions) of records. Nine were added on 27 May 2011 alone, with millions more being added almost every work day of the week.
  • As of 29 May 2011, there are 58,768 articles in the FamilySearch Research Wiki with about a thousand more being added each week.
  • FamilySearch added a huge collection of United States Civil War Records which includes links to FamilySearch Research Wiki articles and Research Courses.
  • The number of Research Courses was increased to over 140 online courses with new courses being added regularly.
  • Information on FamilySearch centers is being added daily to the Research Wiki, with the goal to include all of them from around the world. 
  • The entire set of websites is being continually more integrated and works better than ever.
  • As a negative, the BYU Family History Archives seems stuck on 17,777 items and there is no sign that new items have been or will be added even though scanning continues.
  • FamilySearch Indexing was down and offline for a few days, but seems to be back and running, with millions of records being indexed each month.
  • New.FamilySearch.org hasn't been officially updated since February, 2011, but access has been given to a limited number of people outside of Church membership.
  • You can now do a search on the updated FamilySearch.org website for IGI Batch numbers.
  • Forums.FamilySearch.org was updated and new categories added for the Wiki. Unfortunately, it is still stuck in obscurity.
You can see from this list that the FamilySearch folks have had their hands full. The combination of the Research Wiki, the Historical Record Collections, the Forums, the Research Courses and Family History Library Catalog make this the most valuable genealogical resource in existence.

2 comments:

  1. Until the general public gets access to NFS,, all of these wonderful bullet points you and others keep posting mean pretty much nothing to those outside the LDS. That includes me.

    ReplyDelete
  2. Daniel,

    Only newFamilySearch is not open to the general public. everything else that James listed above is open and useful. You do have to have a free registration to use some of the features, but it's free after that.

    ReplyDelete