Genealogists Win With FamilySearch/OCLC Partnership

By | February 2, 2013

Two indispensable genealogy resources are joining forces, resulting in a win for genealogists wanting to access offline family history materials.

FamilySearch and OCLC (the Online Computer Library Center) have reached an agreement to list the holdings of the FamilySearch genealogy catalog in WorldCat, the OCLC’s online search portal to catalogs from 74,000 repositories in more than 70 countries.

Under this partnership, OCLC will incorporate data from FamilySearch’s catalog into WorldCat, and FamilySearch will use OCLC cataloging services to continue to catalog its collections in WorldCat. FamilySearch will also incorporate WorldCat results into search results returned by FamilySearch genealogy services.

Once they’re combined, instead of searching WorldCat for family and local histories and other sources, then searching FamilySearch for genealogy records, you’ll be able to run a search at either site for results from both.

That’ll also make it easier to see when a library near you holds copies of FamilySearch genealogy resources—including printed books, which FamilySearch doesn’t circulate to its local FamilySearch Centers.

On WorldCat, you can set up a profile to create your own bibliographies, review materials, and more. WorldCat also has a Facebook app so you can search from within Facebook.

Once you find materials you want to borrow from the FamilySearch Family History Library, you’ll need to plan a visit to a FamilySearch Center. Click here for our tips on doing genealogy research at FamilySearch Centers.

Read more about the FamilySearch/OCLC partnership in the organizations’ press release.