Wednesday, February 09, 2011

Ancestry.com Library Edition Now Available in Family History Centers

The actual letter sent to my Family History Center in American Fork, Utah.

FamilySearch Support Tue, Feb 8, 2011 at 10:52 PM

Dear Family History Center Director:

FamilySearch is pleased to announce an agreement with Ancestry.com that will provide family history centers an opportunity to combine the tremendous resources available from both organizations. Under the new partnership, patrons at English-speaking family history centers around the world will have access to the library edition of services from FamilySearch and Ancestry.com.

A link to the Ancestry.com library edition is now available on the Family History Center (FHC) Portal, accessed from http://www.fhc.familysearch.org/. FHC computers must have LANDesk installed in order to access the FHC Portal and Ancestry.com.

If you experience any problems using or gaining access to the FHC Portal or Ancestry.com, shut down and restart your computer. If that does not resolve the problem, go to contact.familysearch.org for information on contacting FamilySearch.

Due to this resource, family history centers may see an increase in the number of patrons visiting them. Center directors and high councilors responsible for family history should work together to manage this possible increase in patronage.

Thank you,

FamilySearch

6 comments:

Jake said...

Yippy! Just got back from my FHC in Southern Utah and it was so nice to have free access to Ancestry.com! Thank you to those involved in getting it back!

Mitch said...

Is the "library edition" a cut down version?

ChicagoGenealogy said...

I really like the new portal page. It makes it easy to find FamilySearch resources and somehow it just feels easy to use. (I linked a screen shot of it for our patrons at http://wilmettefhc.org/images/portal.bmp in case anyone hasn't seen it.)

We made good use of Ancestry.com at the Wilmette Family History Center yesterday. It was great to have that resource available for our patrons.

Cynthia

OGW said...

I agree with Cynthia ... I think the new portal is great!

Adrisn said...

@Mitch,

No, I do not beleive the library edition is a cut down version but you will not be able to add to your tree directly if you have an ancestry subscription, you would have to copy details over manually. But the library edition is very good.

A

Anonymous said...

@Adrisn, it is a cut-down version of Ancestry. You can do a lot, but not all collections are available in the Library Edition, including some major ones.

If you are LDS, there is a new arrangement where you can get free Ancestry membership.