After a week of rumors, FamilySearch announced Tuesday the return of Ancestry.com to family history centers.
In addition to Ancestry.com, the FHC portal gives family history centers free access to these premium websites:
- 19th Century British Library Newspaper Digital Archive
- Alexander Street Press – The American Civil War
- Find My Past
- Footnote.com
- The Genealogist
- Genline Family Finder
- Godfrey Memorial Library
- Heritage Quest Online
- Historical Map Works Library Edition
- Paper Trail (from the Oregon-California Trails Association)
- World Vital Records
It's not the regular Ancestry.com. It's Ancestry.com *Library Edition*. Big difference.
ReplyDelete@Anon,
ReplyDeleteYeah there is a big difference. Trees. As in unsourced junk genealogy for the most part. You have to subscribe to be a treebie.
This is a big (re)addition to FHCs. Now all the census' and associated indexes will be available plus many state level vital records.
As a volunteer, I have often had to refer patrons to a local library branch to access Ancestry to get those census enumerations not found in the FHC Edition or our state's death certs. Now that can be accessed at the centers.
The most access on Ancestry that anyone is going to get short of subscribing at home is the Library Edition. For those who don't subscribe, Rootsweb World Connect trees are free, albeit media free too. But they work well which Ancestry trees don't.
The big difference is in the number of databases and images. The Ancestry edition for FHCs has a couple of hundred databases; the regular Ancestry has close to 30,000 databases.
ReplyDeleteWoot Woot! Went to my FHC yesterday to check this out, and yep its the Ancestry.com Library Edition, which is a huge improvement over the Ancestry.com FHC Edition (which only had a few hundred databases). The only difference between this newly available edition and a personal subscription is the ability to create a family tree!
ReplyDeleteAll the Ancestry.com databases are available in the library edition, so this is such a blessing, and I feel like I can actually do some good research at my local FHC now! Thank You FamilySearch and Ancestry!