What a year 2022 has been at FamilySearch! In 2022, FamilySearch.org added billions of new, freely searchable records to help its millions of visitors make important new family discoveries.
RootsTech 2022, hosted by FamilySearch, was a phenomenal success with more than 3 million joining the celebration online during the 3-day live event. Millions more have accessed free, recorded content from the conference throughout the year.
The cadence of gathering and publishing the world’s genealogical records online increased with a focus on select countries or homelands and a major US Census project. In addition, a new online volunteer tool was introduced, which, coupled with artificial intelligence and handwriting recognition technology, will vastly increase the searchability rate of non-English documents.
Read on to learn more about these accomplishments and new product features and discovery experiences added by FamilySearch in 2022.
RootsTech 2022 Highlights
FamilySearch’s all-virtual RootsTech 2022 event welcomed more than 3 million participants through online, broadcast, and other channels from 227 countries and territories. The conference featured over 1,500 sessions in more than 30 languages covering 185 topics—all of which have been freely available online at RootsTech.org since the conference ended. Main stage speakers at RootsTech 2022 included Brazilian Telenova star Thaís Pacholek, comedian Maysoon Zayid, food TV host and cookbook author Molly Yeh, Argentine singer and musician, Diego Torres, Ghanian champion boxer Azuma Nelson, Stranger Things actor Matthew Modine, French-American bread maker, Apollonia Poilâne, and FamilySearch CEO Steve Rockwood.
The 1950 US Census Community Project
The National Archives and Records Administration (NARA) of the United States released the 1950 US Census for public access in 2022. The census contains records of more than 150 million Americans and will be one of the most popular databases for online genealogical research in the USA. FamilySearch engaged online volunteers to help create a robust index to make the census highly searchable and discoverable—for free. Search the 1950 US Census now.
Get Involved: New Online Volunteer Experience
The new FamilySearch Get Involved online volunteer experience, coupled with FamilySearch’s state-of-the-art handwriting recognition artificial intelligence technology, is changing the future of family discovery. It promises to make billions more historical records freely discoverable online—particularly non-English genealogical records. Over 100 million records have already been made searchable at FamilySearch.org since Get Involved was launched, and more records are being added in additional languages for volunteers to review. Explore how to participate at FamilySearch Get Involved.
The FamilySearch Family Tree
Users of the collaborative FamilySearch Family Tree added more than 80 million new ancestors, and users added over 360 million additional sources in 2022, helping to make it the world’s largest online family tree. User-contributed sources help strengthen the genealogical accuracy of ancestor pages—and the likelihood of connecting to missing ancestors.
New FamilySearch Family Tree Features Added in 2022
- A First Ancestor pedigree view allows users to connect to a first ancestor in the Tree and then build or see their children in each generation, down to the current generation. Read more.
- The new default Person Page enables users to record and learn all about their ancestors with a new About tab and updated features. Users can now customize the layout of the Details tab, add an alert note, add other relationships, better see attached sources, and more.
More Searchable Records from around the World
Access to the world’s historical genealogical records aids personal family history discovery like none other. FamilySearch added nearly 2 billion searchable names and images in 2022 from ancestral homelands worldwide for a total of 16.3 billion free historical records and images! Significant expansions in 2022 included records for Scandinavian countries (Norway, Denmark, Sweden, and Finland), the Netherlands, Spain, the United Kingdom, Canada, the United States, Mexico, Uruguay, Venezuela, Peru, areas in the Caribbean and Pacific Islands, and more.
FamilySearch Digital Library (Online Books)
In 2022, FamilySearch added 19,264 books to its FamilySearch Digital Library collection of scanned books, bringing the total collection now to over 550,000 full-text searchable books (family histories, local histories, school yearbooks, and other genealogical types of books). The search feature has been significantly enhanced with tools that enable additional search fields and text highlighting, and image viewing and sharing. Learn more about the 2022 enhancements.
Help with Family History
Many individuals need help at some point in making family history discoveries. For those just getting started, there are new enhancements to FamilySearch’s online Help Center. From personal discoveries, searching records, creating a family tree, or having family history fun, this page can help patrons get started making family discoveries. FamilySearch also has over 5,700 local centers worldwide that offer free personal assistance.
FamilySearch Wiki Milestone
The FamilySearch Wiki published its 100,000th genealogical research article in 2022! The free online reference tool helps patrons discover ancestors by answering many common questions. Each wiki article is written and updated by research specialists at the FamilySearch Library and from the global genealogical community.
The free service averages 50,000 visitors each day and adds about 100 new articles daily.
New Director at the FamilySearch Library
Lynn Turner replaced David Rencher as the director of the world-famous FamilySearch Library. Turner was previously the assistant director of the library and is an accredited genealogist. Rencher will continue as FamilySearch’s Chief Genealogical Officer.
