Family History Library in Salt Lake City: Why Go There?

The StLGS Annual Research Trip to Salt Lake City

Each year in the fall, StLGS sponsors a research trip to the Family History Library in Salt Lake City, Utah. For one full week, you can enjoy non-stop, uninterrupted working time at this huge genealogy playground! The trip includes seven nights at the Salt Lake Plaza Hotel, right next door to the library and across the street from Temple Square. Shuttle service to and from the airport, a Sunday dinner, Monday evening meeting, and individual assistance all week long from two experienced leaders are also part of the package. A pre-trip meeting and an electronic mailing list insure that all your questions are answered and give participants a chance to get to know each other a bit before traveling.
If most of your genealogy research has been done online, perhaps you've never even heard of the Family History Library in Salt Lake City. Or maybe you have been to the FamilySearch.org website and wondered about what was on the site and where it all came from. What's the connection between the two and why go to Salt Lake City when it's supposedly all online anyway?

Here's some food for thought:

•  First, less than ten percent of all available family history documents are online.
• Copyright restrictions and state and local laws have and will continue to prevent "everything" from being offered online in the near future.
• Some books and/or documents that were filmed in the past are available to peruse ONLY in the Family History Library because of agreements signed with the owners.

What's in the Library?

• The Family History Library in Salt Lake City is the world's largest library devoted just to genealogy. It contains four floors of books, microfilm/fiche, maps, reference books, and computers from every state and most countries on the planet.
• The Mormon church owns and runs the library, which is open to everyone and free of charge. They also own and run the FamilySearch website, which contains the library's catalog, a wonderful wiki with instructions on how to do research on various topics and in a wide variety of locations. Also on the site are tutorials, classes, workshops, and more, all free.
• Within the library are copies of millions of original documents, either on microfilm/fiche or digitized. There are also thousands of books and maps covering both past and present.
• An increasingly large computer network gives access to many subscription websites and many records that previously had been on CDs or DVDs.
• Very fast, modern digitizing and printing machines are on each floor, allowing you to save files to your own media for free or to print them on paper for a nominal fee.

Interested in Going?

The StLGS 2018 trip begins on Sunday, 28 October and ends the following Sunday, 4 November. Pre-registration will be ending on 30 June, and you can save $100 and take part in all the pre-trip preparations if you register by that date. More information and a four-page registration flyer are on the StLGS website: https://stlgs.org/events/salt-lake-city-research-trip. If you have any questions, please send an email to slctrip@stlgs.org. We hope you will join us!