Impressive Developments in the FamilySearch Library Catalog

The FamilySearch Library Catalog (formerly called the Family History Library Catalog) has taken a huge step forward in providing information about the items in the catalog. Now it is possible to search the catalogs of many of the major FamilySearch Libraries around the world directly from the FamilySearch.org website. This list of participating libraries is impressive. Here is a screenshot showing the link for searching in a particular library:

Clicking on this link, brings up a list of the participating libraries. For example, if I choose to see what is in the Mesa FamilySearch Library, I get the following list of 100,433 items. This is most, if not all, of the items in the Mesa FamilySearch Library Catalog including microfilms, microfiche, books and other documents.

You may need to click on the images to see the details. Another example, the Taipei, Taiwan Family History Center has 29,965 items, of these, 28,048 are in Chinese. Here is a screenshot:

In addition, the digitized books have now been added to the Library Catalog, so If you search for a book in the FamilySearch Library Catalog, the resulting entry will tell you if the book is digitized and also give you the option of finding out which Libraries have the book. Here is a screenshot showing the links:

So now, if you are looking for a specific item, you can quickly tell if the item is in a local library. You really need to spend a few minutes and try out the options to see how well they really work to identify the location of the books and other resources. This is a major breakthrough in the way the various libraries work. Now with a combined catalog, the materials in the libraries are much more accessible.