FamilySearch Online, Free, Digitized Book Collection Reaches 200,000 Volumes

The free, online, digitized book collection on FamilySearch.org has been growing rapidly and has now reached over 200,000 volumes. All of these books are completely searchable and in most cases can be downloaded to the registered user's computer. Here is a quote describing the collection from the announcement on the FamilySearch blog in an article entitled, "Free Historic Book Collection Online Hits 200,000th Milestone."

Imagine a free virtual online library of rare historic books from all over the world to help you discover rich, unknown details about the lives of your ancestors. What if the historic book collections held by significant public libraries and venerable societies were the sources of these contributed books? You’d have a dynamic, priceless online repository of some of the greatest hidden historic treasures predominantly unknown to man. International, and a growing host of partnering libraries and organizations and volunteers, have announced today that they’ve reached the milestone of publishing 200,000 historic volumes online for free at books.FamilySearch.org. The growing online collection, which began in 2007, is invaluable to genealogists and family historians in finding their ancestors.

Here is a screenshot of the search page for the Books collection on FamilySearch.org:

Here is the list of contributing libraries:

• Allen County Public Library
• Brigham Young University Harold B. Lee Library
• Brigham Young University Idaho David O. McKay Library
• Brigham Young University Hawaii Joseph F. Smith Library
• Church History Library
• Family History Library
• Houston Public Library - Clayton Library Center for Genealogical Research
• Mid-Continent Public Library - Midwest Genealogy Center
• Historical Society of Pennsylvania
• Onondaga County Public Library

 Please refer to the announcement for additional information about the contributing libraries and the process of digitizing the books.