Federation Of Family History Societies

Federation and findmypast.com in online partnership

Findmypast.com to host the Federation of Family History Societies’  Family History Online data

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

Until now the FFHS has provided online access to data submitted by local family history societies at its own pay per view website www.familyhistoryonline.net. These records will now gradually be transferred to the findmypast.com website, joining a collection already exceeding 500 million records.

The partnership with findmypast.com offers a number of benefits to contributing family history societies. By integrating Family History Online with the findmypast.com 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 will continue to receive royalties each time their records are accessed. Every society will be acknowledged on the findmypast.com website whenever its records are displayed, and the societies will be 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.com said,

“Family History Online has a valuable data collection that deserves to be brought to the attention of a wider, international audience. We are 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.com 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.com 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.com 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.com’s undoubted expertise. We are working in harmony with the findmypast.com team to realise our shared aim of bringing our member societies’ records to a growing audience worldwide.”