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By Kimberly
Powell
Of the many visitors who travel to Salt Lake City on vacation or business each
year, hundreds of thousands make a side trip to the Family
History Library, the world's most popular destination for people in search of
their ancestors. The great library, run by the Church of Jesus Christ of
Latter-day Saints and open free to everyone, traces its own roots back to 1894.
It boasts the world's largest collection of family history resources -
over 2.2 million rolls of microfilmed genealogical records, 742,000 microfiche,
300,000 books and 4,500 periodicals - with records from more than 100 countries,
covering everything from 14th century English church records to African oral
histories. An
average of 2,400 people, including many visitors from Europe and Asia, visit the
library each day. It can actually be easier and cheaper to travel to Salt Lake
City and find all of the information in one place than to have to travel from
one small town to another to gather records. North America's Fastest Growing Hobby
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Visitors
line up outside the Family History Library waiting to research their
family tree. On average, 2,400 people visit the library each day. |
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- For a hobby that revolves
around dead people, genealogy is remarkably popular. It is considered by most
to be the
fastest-growing hobby in North America, with many surveys and media sources
proclaiming that it has surpassed quilting, stamp collecting and even gardening in
popularity.
- Interest in genealogy is
growing at an astounding rate according to a
2000 Maritz Marketing Research
poll, which found that up to 60 percent of the American population is
interested in their family history. That's up 15 percent from a similar poll
conducted in 1996.
- It's not just Americans
either. Overwhelming demand recently forced the British Public Record Office
to take the brand-new England and Wales 1901 census Web site offline
temporarily amid fears the entire UK telephone network could be paralyzed by
the tremendous demand (millions of visitors exceeded capacity by a factor of
20 during the first days of operations).
- Traffic to popular
genealogy Web sites demonstrates the growing interest in tracing family history
online: for example, the FamilySearch Web site of the Family History Library
gets six to seven million hits per day.
- The U.S. Senate passed a
resolution in October 2001 declaring October in the U.S. as Family History
Month. Led by Senator Orrin Hatch of Utah and co-sponsored by 84 other U.S.
Senators, the resolution stated "within the last month some 14,167,329 people
researched their family history and 24 million people have used the Web and
email to locate or hunt for family or friends with whom they had lost touch."
- The Internet genealogy
industry is worth an estimated $200 million annually. Popular genealogy Web
site Ancestry.com, which achieved the 500,000 paid subscriber mark in December
2001, is the third-largest paid subscription site on the Internet and is
closing rapidly on ConsumerReports.org and WSJ.com.
Why is genealogy fast becoming more popular than stitching a quilt or pruning
the roses? According to Kim Farah, spokeswomen for the Family History Library,
it is because genealogy touches on a fundamental need. "It's universal, it
crosses all faiths and cultures. Finding out who you are is in each of us. The
positive benefits of knowing our heritage, of the sacrifices others have made
for us, gives us a sense of responsibility and self-esteem."
Next page > Planning
Your Visit to the Family History Library
URL:
http://genealogy.about.com/library/weekly/aa011502a.htm
©
2002 Kimberly Powell and
About.com.
All Rights Reserved.
Family
History Library image © 2001 Shearer Images.
Used with Permission.
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