LDS Digitizing Books, on-line NOW at BYU !!!

Oh BOY, here we go!

A dream coming true. The Family History Library is starting to digitize their book holdings, mostly family histories to date, and they are putting them on-line, fully searchable by any word or advanced search combinations.

Five thousand plus of these books are on the Brigham Young University Library servers and readily accessible, NOW!

Here is a partial clip of an announcement I just received and I have only made a quick check of how to find them and how to search, but it is very exciting

“…the LDS Family History Library has announced that it has begun the process of digitizing and making available on the Internet all of the Family History books in their collection. These are primarily books in the "929.273Series" that are currently housed on the first floor of the Family History Library (previously housed on the fourth floor of the Joseph Smith Memorial Building). At the present time (September 2005), about 5000 books have been digitized and are available, and they have announced that they are adding about 100 titles a week to the on-line collection. Copyright issues are playing a role in determining the order in which they progress through this task; books out of copyright are being done first.”

Go to the web site of the Harold B. Lee Library at BYU at http://www.lib.byu.edu/ , then on the home page, follow the links: Find Other Materials; Electronic; On Line Collections at BYU; Text Collections tab; Family History Archive from the list of collections that are displayed. The search box on the left seems to be he one to find your books at and the search box on the right is for searching within the pages on screen.

I have not used it enough yet to be proficient, but you bet I’ll be checking this little treasure out, a lot!