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BYU Studies Quarterly

BYU Studies Quarterly

Howard C. Bybee

Keywords

Mormon studies, online resources, genealogical research, genealogy, family history, family history research

Abstract

More than three million Internet sites offer their services to genealogists and family historians for research. This truly exhausting array of Internet sites makes online genealogical research more convenient and more confusing for beginners and professionals. Keeping up with innovations can easily distract an Internet researcher. Individuals, family organizations, corporations, nonprofit organizations, libraries, and governments continually create more online content, much of it useful for family history and genealogical research. What we used to call genealogy has morphed into family history, and the web serves as both the scholarly publisher and the vanity press for primary and secondary sources used by genealogists and family historians of every degree. Researchers are spending more on subscriptions and document downloads and less on travel and copy orders, and governments have discovered a revenue source for supporting their archives and record repositories by charging for downloaded digital copies of vital records and by licensing companies to scan and publish documents on the Internet. Competition is keen for digital rights, creating a competitive atmosphere between Internet publishers, both fee and free. Keeping up with proliferating websites is a challenge to the professional and amateur researcher, who must discover, sift through, and subscribe to a growing array of resources in order to write family history.

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