Church, partners open online archive.

• Author: Swartz, Nikki
• Position: UP FRONT: News, Trends & Analysis - Church of Jesus Christ of Latterday Saints

The Church of Jesus Christ of Latterday Saints (LDS) is partnering with various archives, libraries, and genealogy websites to open an online database containing billions of family-history records and images.

The LDS Church recently announced its plan--the Records Access program--designed to eventually provide access to as many as 80 billion family records via the Internet, in addition to the tens of billions of records it is currently indexing out of its Granite Mountain Records Vault microfilm archives, according to media reports.

The collaboration will help archives and other records custodians digitize, index, publish, and preserve their collections. The end product will be both a content website and a portal to other sites, officials said.

According to the Salt Lake Tribune, the collaboration will work like this: volunteers from all over the world will index data from 2.4 million rolls of microfilm being housed at the LDS Church's Granite Vault, as well as digitize and index data from other sources. In addition, they will collect information already indexed at other sites. The records then will be posted online and opened to the public. Church officials said the program will speed the process of indexing and posting billions of records and reduce costs for all involved parties.

As part of the agreement, Family-Search will digitize the images currently held in the National Archives and Records Administration's (NARA) collection in Washington, D.C., and the genealogy website Footnote.com will create the electronic indexes.

When complete, the images and indexes of this vast collection will be accessible at the more than 4,500 LDS Church-run family-history centers around the world...