FamilySearch partners with Ontario Ancestors to digitize historic books

 

A Message from Society President Steve Fulton, UE

Quoting from an announcement made on 28 August 2020:

Ontario Ancestors and FamilySearch International announced their new book scanning partnership. Under the agreement, FamilySearch will provide specialized book scanning services and support volunteers in exchange for access to Ontario Ancestors’ extensive library of historical and genealogical books. Digitized documents will be publicly available on both websites. Digitization is scheduled to begin by the end of 2020, depending on pandemic restrictions. 

This agreement is a first for a genealogical society in Canada. President Steve Fulton UE commented that “this agreement has no direct cost to us, but the benefits to the society are immeasurable.” He also went on to say that this agreement is a “direct result of the many conversations that we have had with a number of partners, and [it] is a key to delivering on the society’s goal of building up its digital presence by utilizing strong partnerships.” 

Dennis Meldrum, FamilySearch manager of book scanning partnerships, says Ontario Ancestors has one of the largest collections of family history and genealogy books in Canada. “It will be a privilege to work with Ontario Ancestors to digitize and share their impressive collection of books not under copyright,” said Meldrum.

This is the second time the two organizations have partnered on records preservation and access. The first digitization project was the Vernon Directories that began in 2019 (Search the Ontario Vernon Directories for fun discoveries about your ancestors).

FamilySearch.org currently has over 490,000 genealogically significant digital books online which are free to the registered users of the website. See the following:

https://www.familysearch.org/library/books/