FamilySearch Historical Record Collections hits 500

With today's additions, the number of collections on FamilySearch's Historical Record Collections (formerly Record Search Pilot) has reached 500. The 500th collection is the Netherlands, Civil Registrations, 1792-1952, with 2,085 records. The number of records is somewhat misleading, since the collection contains images of the records of civil births, marriages, marriage intentions, marriage proclamations, marriage supplements, deaths, and 10-year indexes and contains 7,860,411 images.  This addition also brings to eight, the number of collections for the Netherlands.

The list of records gives you some idea of the breadth of records that will continue to appear. Even though the list of collections has a entry labeled "Records" where there is a number for each collection, the number of records is not the same as the number of images or names contained on the images.  For example, like the Netherlands mentioned above, Alabama Births and christenings, 1881-1930 is listed as having 5,563 records but by clicking on the entry you can see that the collection actually contains 203,254 records, but recent records may not be displayed.

This free collection of records taken from scans of the FamilySearch Family History Library microfilm collection, has moved from being a mildly interesting site to becoming a phenomena. Already, even though only a small percentage of the holdings of the Family History Library have been digitized and loaded online, the collection covers an astounding amount of information.