This presentation by James L. Tanner from the BYU Library Family History This presentation provides a comprehensive guide on navigating and utilizing the FamilySearch Digital Library, a completely free online repository containing over 650,000 digitized genealogical books, histories, and maps. It outlines key features of the platform, including its full-text search capabilities, advanced search filters, and diverse historical collections such as local histories, directories, yearbooks, and compiled family genealogies. Furthermore, the slides demonstrate how AI tools like Google Gemini can enhance research efficiency within public domain books, while detailing the library's various access levels governed by copyright laws. Ultimately, researchers are encouraged to leverage this massive collaborative archive—as well as external platforms like the Internet Archive—to uncover valuable historical and contextual details about their ancestors.
