Announcement of over 300,000,000 records added to FamilySearch Beta

Apparently at the same time over 180 new collections of records were added to FamilySearch's Record Search (also known as Record Search Pilot) the same records plus most of the existing records from the Record Search were added to the FamilySearch Beta. The announcement was made to the FamilySearch Indexers upon their login to the FamilySearch Indexing website. The announcement also appeared in the Salt Lake Tribune. The announcement contained the following:

FamilySearch, the world's largest repository of genealogical information, today announced it will release records containing 300 million names that can now be researched online for free.

Jay Verkler, president of FamilySearch, the genealogy division of The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints, made the announcement during the National Genealogical Society's annual meeting. More than 2,000 family history specialists, librarians and ancestral hobbyists are attending the convention at the Salt Palace Convention Center in Salt Lake City.

FamilySearch has established a temporary website, fsbeta.FamilySearch.org for the records. In the next several weeks, the site will become a permanent part of FamilySearch.org.

I will have more comments on the records released as soon as I get a chance to review them.