Historical Record Collections
Historical record collections on FamilySearch can come from various sources:
- Digitized microfilms: A record collection can come from more than one digitized microfilm of similar content.
- Images of historical records that we captured as digital images
- Third-party subscription websites who share content with our users, sometimes for a fee
Search the catalog
To find more historical records or learn about the contents of a microfilm, search the catalog.
- To see what additional historical records are available, search by place.
- Search by number. Find the number as you browse images of historical records. Or look at the Document Information field on a record details page (the page that shows the indexed information from a historical record).
In a catalog entry, scroll to the Film/Digital Notes section. Here you can see the kinds of records and date ranges for each microfilm number.
Find historical records not included in Historical Record Collections
The catalog can help find other microfilms that are not in the Historical Records Collections. After you search, if you see a camera icon in the Film/Digital Notes, you can click it to browse digital images. If you see a camera icon with a key over it, the digitized images have some viewing restrictions. To learn about the restrictions, click the icon. A magnifying glass icon indicates that some portion of the microfilm is indexed. To see if you can search the index, click the icon. Some indexes have restrictions that do not permit use of the index.
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