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Provo-based Ancestry.com announced Tuesday it has acquired about 1 billion more digitized family records to add to its database. The new family information comes from 67 different countries.
These new records were provided by FamilySearch International and are part of an agreement with Ancestry.com to digitize, index and publish these records and more over the next five years. FamilySearch is a nonprofit family-records organization operated by The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints.
"We are excited to be expanding our exclusive, groundbreaking agreement with FamilySearch," Ancestry.com Chief Executive Tim Sullivan said in a statement. "In addition to the previously announced plan to together digitize 1 billion records never before published online, we're thrilled to be able to provide our members with access to this additional one billion records from 67 countries. These new global records will mean even more discoveries for our members."
FamilySearch states it is the largest genealogical library in the world while Ancestry.com says it is the "world's largest online family history resource" with more than 2.7 million paying members.
The two joined forces last September in a collaboration that involves Ancestry.com taking FamilySearch's records, which were mostly on microfilm, and digitizing them for Ancestry.com's database. The new acquisition of material includes 200 million images with birth, marriage, death, census and church records from Europe, Latin America, South Africa, South America, Asia and more, according to a release by Ancestry.com. The new records will be available this month and will be published on the website over the next few months.
Ancestry.com, which has offices worldwide, has more than 12 billion family records that date back to the 1300s. Members have created more than 55 million family trees though the service, containing more than 5 billion profiles.