Genealogy researchers are having many records made available to them in these modern times than at any other time in history. Genealogy research has become a whole lot easier these days. Many resources will continue to be available and to be easily accessible even in the future.

Various Resources

The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints, commonly known as the Mormons has released two types of genealogy-related resources in the last few years. The Family History Department's databases in CD-ROM in digital format with indexes to the multiple millions of people have now been made invaluable resources for genealogy researchers. The Family History Department will come out with the US Census Index of 1880 in digital format on a CD-ROM. The Church of the Latter Day Saints will be coming out with many other resources for serious genealogy researchers.

The second resource from the Latter-day Saints Church is the Family Search Internet Genealogy Service that has been launched just recently. The site gives access to the Ancestral File, Family History Library Catalog, Source Guide and International Genealogical Index - all of which are trademark protected. These resources have searchable access making them wonderful finding aids. There are over two billion names in the database that comprise these finding aids. Researchers can search for their family tree information from these over two billion individuals.

The Church of Jesus Christ of the Latter Day Saints is not the sole institution that has ventured into expanding into technology utilization for genealogy research. Akin to creating online version of Family History Library Catalog, another library catalog has been put online by the Daughters of the American Revolution. Similarly, UK's Public Record Office has also put some of its records online over the Internet.

The British PRO is coming up with 1901 Census. It will not be sufficient to release scanned images, now the records will have be released in a properly digitized format so that it has searchable access and can be technology friendly.

Genealogy companies are also coming out with products, which cater to genealogy researchers. These products are mostly individual records, which are in digital format. The Heritage Quest's Family Quest Archives (trademark protected) has commenced the mammoth project of digitizing all data on US Census right from 1970 to 1920. There is a trend towards releasing digital version of family records on CD-ROMs as against scanned images.

Conclusion

The public records digitization trend is a significant aid to people engaged in genealogy research. This is especially true of individuals who are hobby genealogy researchers. Genealogy research has now become very popular over the globe. People wish to delve deep into their roots. One can reasonably expect that more and more of easy to use resources will start becoming available to these hobbyists.