NYBROOKLYN-L Archives

From:
Subject: FHL Books Online at BYU
Date: Sun, 6 Nov 2005 14:06:54 EST

Just received this on another list!!!

Fran
>
>
> The following is an article about online books that I just received.
>
> The message is incredibly cool! You can go to the Brigham Young University
> website http://www.lib.byu.edu/ and do searches of over 5000 books which the
> Family History Library has put online.* ... 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.
>
> As these Family History books are digitized and placed on-line, an entry is
> being placed in the Family History Library on-line catalog with a hyperlink
> to the digitized image. By going to the FHL On-Line Catalog, you can search
> for a specific name, find a book that has been indexed using the name, and view
> it on-line, flipping through the pages as separate "pdf" images, much the
> same as if you were on the first floor of the Family History Library. =
>
> Of course, the indexing that is available through the FHL Catalog is only as
> good as the human indexers made it; typically they only include the "top" 4
> to 6 names that appear in each book in their indexing efforts. But there is
> even better news!
>
> The digitized images of these Family History books are actually being stored
> on the electronic servers at Brigham Young University in Provo, Utah.=
>
> By going directly to the BYU web site to view the images, there are several
> additional possibilities that provide genealogists functionality that they
> have never had before. You are now able to do full-text searches on each book,
> and on every digitized book in the collection. Now you can locate the small
> two-paragraph entry on Grandpa Ebenezer McGarrah that is buried in one of the
> Family History books that you would have otherwise never thought to look at
> before. This can open up a huge new possibility for extending lines, getting
> past brick walls, and uncovering new relatives!=
>
>
> How to Find The Digitized Images?
>
> Go to the web site of the Harold B. Lee Library at BYU at
> http://www.lib.byu.edu/ on their home page, follow the links "Find Other
> Materials/Electronic/On Line Collections at BYU". Click on the "Text Collections" tab and select
> the "Family History Archive" from the list of collections that are displayed.
>
> You would then normally want to use the "Search All" feature with the
> "Search Full Text" box checked, although the "Advanced Search" will allow very
> high-powered searches that will allow certain phrases to be searched for and
> other words to be used to exclude potential hits. As you make selections from the
> "hits" that are displayed, you will need to use the "Click Here to View
> Item" button near the top of the screen to display the actual image of the page.
> You can page through the entire document using the index displayed on the
> left side of the screen. Each page may be printed after being viewed.
>
> One interesting sidelight is, when you are at the first web page for the
> Family History Archive (the page that lets you begin a search), click on the
> "Browse the Collection" button. This will display every Family History book that
> has been digitized and is available in the collection.
>
> You can scroll through this list much the same as if you were walking up and
> down the stacks at the library. At the top of the first page of the search
> results, it displays the number of hits, which (in this case) is the number of
> books in the collection. If you keep track of this number, you can get a
> pretty good idea of how fast they are adding titles to the collection as you
> revisit the web site from time to time. I think you will want to visit this site
> often as the collection grows!"
>
>
> --
>

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