PROVO, Utah

It was a momentous day 10 years ago when the Church launched FamilySearch.org, its long-awaited Internet Genealogy Service. At the official announcement press conference on May 24, 1999, President Gordon B. Hinckley said, "I hope you understand this is far from just a new Web site," noting that it would allow Internet access to some of the most significant materials in the Family History Library.

Steve W. Anderson

A decade later, the Church president’s words carry even more significance than they did on that occasion.

"We have been pushing forward with this FamilySearch identity for a couple of years now," said Steve W. Anderson July 30 at the annual four-day Conference on Family History and Genealogy at BYU. "Even though the Web site was launched 10 years ago, we never really tried to draw all of our public activities under one identity until a couple of years ago."

Brother Anderson is the marketing manager for FamilySearch, which today designates a non-profit organization sponsored by the Church, not just the Web site under that name.

In his presentation, "Happy Birthday, FamilySearch!" he looked at the past and future. He outlined what has happened, not just with the Web site, but with the Church’s public genealogy-gathering activities that began in 1894 with the establishment of the Genealogical Society of Utah. Later, in 1938, the Church began microfilming genealogical records, and over the ensuing years, accumulated an overwhelming collection of microfilmed records that in the early 1960s were placed in the Granite Mountain Records Vault, a storage facility hewn from solid granite in the mountains east of the Salt Lake Valley. Today it stores 2.5 million rolls of microfilm and various publications, sound recordings and historical documents.

"Another entity is, of course, the Family History Library, which is a kind of global entity," Brother Anderson said. Through thousands of satellite family history centers, as well as the Web site, it allows access to the records that have been gathered over the years.

"So all of these entities we are trying to bring under one name to help people understand this is one repository of records, information, services, people, and that umbrella name is FamilySearch," he said.

He discussed some milestones that have occurred with the FamilySearch Web site in its decade of existence.

One that came in the initial year was the launch of Personal Ancestral File as free, downloadable version of the software, previously available only in DOS format, that individuals could use to manage their own family history records.

Another milestone that year was the online launch of the International Genealogical Index, now the most-searched genealogical index in the world. "It has its place in helping people get a start, or get a clue, into their family history. We learned that sometimes just opening their eyes to the possibility, to the next years, was a good and productive thing to do."

Other indexes added over the years, he said, were Pedigree Resource File, launched with about a million names and now with over 100 million; the Jewish Records Index, the largest collection of names for those with Jewish ancestry, which the Church donated to an international association for Jewish historical societies; Freedman Bank’s Records, which allows traceable ancestry for about 10 million African Americans; the Ellis Island project with roughly 24 million names, an endeavor that took several years, the results of which were donated to the National Park Service at Ellis Island; the 1880 U.S. Census, comprising about 50 million names; and the 1881 British and Canadian censuses.

"Today, we are the largest genealogical organization in the world," he said. "We operate in over 80 countries. We have tens of thousands of people as staff, volunteers, missionaries involved in the work, and now have over 4,600 family history centers." Its records number in the billions, from more than 100 countries, and millions of users access its services.

He said that two years ago, when representatives of the Church Family History Department toured the Swedish National Archives, the archivist commented, "You have more records about my people than we do."

So what’s ahead for FamilySearch?

"One of the things we’ve learned is that the model we used for decades needed to be dusted off and revised," he said.

That traditional model involved collecting, then microfilming, preserving, indexing and sharing records. Though it has worked well, it has problems, he said. One is limited access to equipment needed to view microfilm.

The traditional model, he said, needs to give way to a new model that involves digitizing as opposed to microfilming of records. "Why? Because we can gather more records, we can gather them faster, we can transport them faster here to be preserved, and we can then have the access on a broader basis."

Over 100,000 volunteers have indexed digitized records for the Church through a program that allows them to work in their own homes on their own personal computers, Brother Anderson said. "That’s a tremendous amount of work that we get that we would never have, and in many countries."

Within the last couple of months, the department has achieved its 250 millionth name indexed through this volunteer program.

The digitized records can then be posted online linked as family trees, enabling people to collaborate in gathering and preserving their own family history.

Some 50 million people are already actively online in such collaboration, he said.

That occurs through tools on today’s FamilySearch such as "Record Search," which allows users to quickly access clear, digitized images of genealogical records at home on their own computers, as opposed to cranking the handle of a microfilm reader at a library.

Brother Anderson said he is confident there is a latent group globally of people who would become interested in family history if shown the way. FamilySearch helps them make the connection, he said.