Federation Of Family History Societies

Federation and findmypast.co.uk in online partnership

findmypast.co.uk to host the Federation of Family History Societies’  Family History Online data

The Federation of Family History Societies (FFHS) was pleased to announce that it has joined forces with premier UK family history website findmypast.co.uk to host the FFHS’ pay per view data service at www.findmypast.co.uk.

Until recently the FFHS had provided online access to data submitted by local family history societies at its own pay per view website www.familyhistoryonline.net. Most of these records have now been transferred to the findmypast.co.uk website, joining a collection already exceeding 500 million records.

However, in some cases much of the census indexes and transcriptions from family history societies are no longer available because findmypast.co.uk have made indexes available and support them with images. Much of this society information will continue to be available in other formats, such as CD-ROM, booklets and some organisations could seek alternative ways of continuing to make it available online if so wished.

The data that was not transferred included:

• Strays (records of people found out of place), particularly census strays, that can now be found more easily by searching the full national sets of census indexes
• Very small databases where the cost of the transfer would outweigh any possible financial return to societies
• Databases where the data was in a very difficult format
• Databases where the contributing family history society, organisation or individual did not wish to sign the agreement with the Federation of Family History Societies.

The partnership with findmypast.co.uk offers a number of benefits to contributing family history societies. By integrating Family History Online with the findmypast.co.uk site, the local societies’ data will become searchable in the context of a much wider range of records and will benefit from a significant marketing budget covering online and offline advertising, search engine marketing, sponsorship, PR, outreach and events.

The individual societies continue to receive royalties each time their records are accessed. Every society is acknowledged on the findmypast.co.uk website whenever its records are displayed, and the societies are able to promote themselves on the findmypast site to a wider audience, for example, by adding information on becoming a member and a link to their own websites.

 Elaine Collins, Commercial Director at findmypast.co.uk said,

“Family History Online had a valuable data collection that deserved to be brought to the attention of a wider, international audience. We were very excited by the prospect of adding quality records which predate 1837 to the existing findmypast collection.

As the largest UK-based provider of online genealogical data, findmypast.co.uk can provide the appropriate platform to drive much greater traffic and usage to the data. This will result in greater awareness of currently underused datasets, such as the National Burial Index, generate increased revenue, and recognition for the Federation’s member societies.”

Family historians accessing the FFHS data from its new home on the findmypast website will also benefit. findmypast.co.uk has earned a strong reputation for the quality of its data and transcriptions, and particularly its customer service. The availability of telephone support and customer transcription error reporting facilities, as well as email support and automatic password reset facilities, sets it apart from other commercial genealogy websites.

Geoff Riggs, Chairman of the Federation of Family History Societies, added:

“The Federation’s Executive is extremely pleased to have reached an agreement with findmypast.co.uk to secure the future of our member societies’ online data. We see this as a very timely opportunity to raise significantly both the revenue and the profile of those societies by capitalising on findmypast.co.uk’s undoubted expertise. We are working in harmony with the findmypast.co.uk team to realise our shared aim of bringing our member societies’ records to a growing audience worldwide.”