Thursday, August 28, 2014

Massive U.S. Obituary Collection Added To FamilySearch

FamilySearch has partnered with GenealogyBank.com to add their massive U.S. Obituary Collection to FamilySearch.obituaries
The collection currently consists of 506,812 searchable images.  The FamilySearch Wiki notes that the collection is an "index to obituaries from thousands of newspapers throughout the United States."
Given the breadth of the digitized newspapers held by NewsBank from across the U.S. and through time, it is easy to project that the total collection may possibly consist of hundreds of millions of obituaries if all of it is eventually published on FamilySearch.
fs_us_obits_hdr
As all genealogists know, obituaries are genealogy gold.  They typically contain a wealth of family history information.   The NewsBank collection is extremely valuable to researchers, not only due to the sheer probable volume of records in the collection but also because of the record extract design they've used.   Obituaries a presented complete with its full source and a full extract of the obituary.
newsbank_obituary
FamilySearch notes that the collection should be cited as:  “United States, GenealogyBank Obituaries, 1980-2014.” Index. FamilySearch. http://FamilySearch.org : accessed 2013. Citing NewsBank, Inc., Naples, Florida.

Our deep appreciation goes out to NewsBank, FamilySearch and those who are bringing this collection to us as genealogy researchers.  We understand and comprehend its value to our community and express our appreciation for it.
Posted 28 Aug 2014 by Lee Drew on the Lineagekeeper’s Genealogy Blog

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