Building Your Library with FamilySearch

I love libraries. Even as kid, libraries were one of my favourite places to be. My generation was the last of the predigital age. I was in high school when computers first started appearing in classrooms, and I was a young adult when the internet became widely available. When I became a genealogist, my appreciation for reference libraries in particular grew.

Did you know that one of the best reference libraries can be accessed right from your computer? Along with records, FamilySearch’s website also gives you access to digitized books. In this post I’ll highlight some interesting ones I’ve found

So, to search the library, click on books. This will take you to the digital library search screen

Just enter in your search term. It doesn’t have to be a location. You can use any term you want. I used “Canada” just as an example. The initial results will show all books that Family Search has. What you want are the books that are accessible online. So go to the filters on the left, click on Access, and choose the Public and Full Permission filters.

Just go through the results until you find something that intrigues you. Click on the image, and then click on View All Pages to open in the viewer

You can zoom in and out with your mouse, and click on the arrows at the sides to flip back and forth between pages. If you would like to download, just click on the square box with arrow

The really nice thing about the download option is that you have the option of downloading as a PDF or JPEG. You also have the option of downloading the whole book, or just one page

There are some great finds in the thousands of books digitized. Here’s a few that I found:

Hay River and Peace River, Canada cemeteries listings – Covers cemeteries in the Northwest Territories, and the Peace River regions of Alberta and British Columbia
The Alaska-Yukon gold book : a roster of the progressive men and women who were the… – Biographies of some of the more notable figures in the Alaska/Yukon Territory
Wrigley’s Saskatchewan directory, 1921/22
Derhak–Melmychuk book of remembrance, 1857-1983 – Among the pages are Family Group Sheets and Photos. Surnames include Derhak, Melnychuk, Mylnychuch, Mykytuik, Smelski, Thachuk, and Zarabny
The Ontario register – v. 4, no. 4 – Look at the index page. It’s full of information!