FFHS-NEWS Ancestry.com and National Archives (USA) Join Forces to Make Millions of Historical Documents Available Online

[News from the Federation of Family History Societies]

Ancestry.com and National Archives (USA) Join Forces to Make Millions of
Historical Documents Available Online to Americans Wanting to Research
Family History 

The National Archives and Records Administration (NARA) and The Generations
Network, Inc., parent company of Ancestry.com, today announced an agreement
that makes millions of historical records more easily available to the
American public. The agreement, which will be signed today at the NARA
headquarters in Washington, D.C. and celebrated with a military theme in
honor of this Memorial Day, allows for the ongoing digitization of a wealth
of historical content, including immigration, birth, marriage, death and
military records.

The new agreement provides critical access to these important historical
records at a faster rate than ever before due to the placement of
Ancestry.com technicians and scanning machines at NARA to continually
digitize content for online access. The initial NARA collections to be
digitized under the new agreement include INS Passenger and Crew Arrival and
Departure Lists from 1897-1958 and Death Notices of U.S. Citizens Abroad
from 1835-1974, which have not been available to the public outside of NARA
research rooms before now.

For more than a decade, Ancestry.com and NARA have collaborated to make
important historical records available to the public, demonstrating their
dovetailing commitment to preserving America's heritage. Ancestry.com
currently has the largest online collection of digitized and indexed NARA
content, including the complete U.S. Federal Census Collection, 1790-1930,
passenger lists from 1820-1960 and WWI and WWII draft registration cards.
Through this new agreement, Ancestry.com and NARA have greatly enhanced
their working relationship. More on the agreement and the long-term
relationship between Ancestry.com and NARA can be found at
http://www.ancestry.com/nara.


Free Public Access on Ancestry.com
To commemorate the NARA-Ancestry.com agreement on the eve of Memorial Day,
Ancestry.com is making its entire U.S. Military Collection -- the largest
online collection of American military records -- available for free to the
public. From May 20 through May 31, people can log on to
http://www.ancestry.com/military to view more than 100 million names and 700
titles and databases of military records, the majority of which come from
NARA, from all 50 U.S. states.


Maggie Loughran 
Joint Administrator, Federation of Family History Societies 
admin at ffhs.org.uk 
www.ffhs.org.uk