Wednesday, February 26, 2014

FamilySearch has designated 2014 as “The Year of the Obituary’’

Now here is an exciting announcement that FamilySearch.org made at RootsTech 2014 -

The year 2014 has been designated as “The Year of the Obituary” for FamilySearch. We know that many family history centers have clipped obituaries from newspapers and we’d like to place these collections online on the FamilySearch website. FamilySearch will scan and digitize the collections. They will then be indexed and placed online. Digitizing obituaries will make these valuable collections easier to access and simpler to attach to FamilyTree. Information gathered from obituaries will help users to add people and data to Family Tree.

Here are some guidelines for what FamilySearch wants to collect:

· These records should be actual obituaries, not indexes.

· They must be camera-ready which means the obituaries should be attached to the same-sized cards (3×5, 4×6) or to 8 1/2 by 11 inch paper.

· If you have already indexed the collection and it is in paper format, please include that with your submission.

After the obituaries are scanned, you may request that they be returned to you or discarded.

If you have a collection you would like to submit to FamilySearch, please contact Nathan Murphy at murphynw@familysearch.org