FamilySearch Affiliate Libraries in Texas
by Suzan Younger
Some of you will remember the day FamilySearch.org launched its website and digital collection for the first time. That was May 24, 1999, and it crashed! The site received 400 to 500 hits per second and IT staff had to bring the site down for a couple of hours to reconfigure the hardware. “The LDS Church braced Monday for high tide. What it got was a tidal wave1.” Genealogists had embraced the computer age and there was no stopping our demands and expectations for access to online digital records.
FamilySearch began digitizing the collections held at the Family History Library in 1998. The May 1999 launch of the website made these images available to researchers around the world, but more importantly, in our homes. The FamilySearch Newsroom website provides eye-popping statistics about the number of digital images at FamilySearch.org and it is interesting to review.2 As of November 2022, there were 4.93 billion images published. Millions of new records are added monthly.
“Not all records are available online.” You’ve heard this before and it’s relevant to the subject of this article – FamilySearch Affiliate libraries. While you can access billions of digitized records on FamilySearch.org, you cannot access all of them from home. There are records and collections that can only be accessed at the Family History Center in Salt Lake City, local Family History Centers, or at an affiliate library. The FAQ on a FamilySearch Blog post explains why records have limited access.
FamilySearch publishes copies of records only after gaining permission from the original record custodian (generally a government agency) and faithfully abiding by all the stipulated conditions and applicable laws. To remain in compliance with these agreements and standards, FamilySearch occasionally needs to adjust access to specific records. If you cannot find a record that was previously accessible, it is likely due to stipulations from the record custodians. 3
This means you may have to visit a physical building, i.e. a Family History Center or affiliate library, to access digital records online. Some records are accessible only in the Salt Lake City Family History Library or at Family History Centers. For the remainder of limited-access records, you can access them at hundreds of affiliate libraries in the United States4, with just under one hundred affiliate libraries in Texas. FamilySearch designated numerous North Texas libraries as a FamilySearch Affiliate Library. The Dallas Public Library system (the Central Library and all branch libraries) and public libraries in Denton, Fort Worth, Frisco, Grapevine, Lancaster, and McKinney are affiliate libraries.
The 8th-floor genealogy section staff at the J. Erik Jonsson Central Library in downtown Dallas can help you access the FamilySearch.org records if needed. They have the background and experience working with FamilySearch.org that a branch librarian may not have. But if you need a closer and more convenient location to check limited access records, then your neighborhood Dallas branch library can provide that access. Be sure to stop by the central desk and ask about their procedures for using one of the library’s public computers. Take your FamilySearch.org login ID and password if you want to access your FamilySearch account. However, you do not need to have a FamilySearch.org account to access the records on an affiliate library computer. FamilySearch.org accounts are free.5 Take a thumb drive if you plan to download records.
How can you tell if a record is a limited access record? The chart below explains the icons used in the FamilySearch catalog. When you find a record showing a camera with a key above it, that record can only be viewed at the FamilySearch Library in Salt Lake City, a Family History Center, or in some cases at an affiliate library. It depends on permissions given by the original custodian or author.
One last reminder. It is always prudent to check the library’s website or to call and confirm the opening and closing hours and days the library is open.
Here is a list of FamilySearch Affiliate Libraries in Texas as of December 2022.
Footnotes
1 Steve Fidel, “LDS Web site is huge, huge hit,” Deseret News, 25 May 1999, online archives (https://www.deseret.com/1999/5/25/19447413/lds-web-site-is-huge-huge-hit : accessed 9 Dec 2022).
2 FamilySearch Newsroom, “Company Facts,” FamilySearch.org, November 2022 (https://www.familysearch.org/en/newsroom/: accessed 9 Dec 2022).
3 FamilySearch, “Frequently Asked Questions: FamilySearch Affiliate Libraries,” FamilySearch.org, FamilySearch Blog, 6 June 2019 (https://www.familysearch.org/en/blog/familysearch-affiliate-library-faq : accessed 9 Dec 2022).
4 “FamilySearch Affiliate Libraries,” FamilySearch Research Wiki (https://www.familysearch.org/en/wiki/FamilySearch_Affiliate_Libraries : accessed 9 Dec 2022).
5 “Create an Account,” FamilySearch.org (https://www.familysearch.org/identity/signup/ : accessed 9 Dec 2022).
