The Globalization of Ancestry.com

I recently took a look at the Ancestry.com Card Catalog as of the date of this post. Ancestry.com has always been a major resource for finding your ancestors in the United States and Great Britain but has not been so helpful in other parts of the world. If you take a look at the new collections added to the website recently, you will see that this limitation is rapidly changing. Here are a few excerpts showing the globalization of the collections. 

• Japan, Clan Genealogies, 850-2012 (in Japanese)
• Magdeburg, Germany, Births, 1874-1903 (in German)
• Baden, Germany, Lutheran Baptisms, Marriages, and Burials, 1783-1875 (in German)
• Korea, Collection of Genealogies, 1500-2009 (in Korean)
• Callao, Peru, Civil Registration, 1874-1996 (in Spanish)
• Serrara Fontana, Napoli, Italy, Civil Registration (Comune), 1809-1929 (in Italian)

The list could go on and on. Interestingly, these additions are primarily from FamilySearch.org. For example, the Serrara Fontana, Napoli, Italy, Civil Registration (Comune), 1809-1929 (in Italian) collection has the following description of the source:

Ancestry.com. Serrara Fontana, Napoli, Italy, Civil Registration (Comune), 1809-1929[database on-line]. Lehi, UT, USA: Ancestry.com Operations, Inc., 2016.
Original data: Italy, Napoli, Serrara Fontana, Civil Registration (Comune), 1809-1929. Salt Lake City, Utah: FamilySearch, 2013.

These extensive collections are a benefit of the strategic partnerships created between FamilySearch and some of the large online databases. The important fact here is that these collections were in microfilm format from FamilySearch.org and are now indexed on Ancestry.com.  The images are on FamilySearch.org.

We can expect more of this kind of synergy to occur in the near future as FamilySearch finishes the task of digitizing all of the 2.4 million rolls of microfilm in its vast collection.

But this also points out the importance to genealogists that they break away from the "traditional" methods they have used to find documents and realize that they need to look at a wider, globalized network of information rather than relying on the their "accepted" methods of doing their research.