FamilySearch, an arm of The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints, is preparing for its annual worldwide convention March 2-4 at the Salt Palace Convention Center.Thousands of people throughout the world participate in the annual event either in-person or online. There have been 200 new classes added to the convention in 2023.

“At RootsTech 2023, we will be creating ways to bring all audiences in to see what’s happening in Salt Lake City, Utah, but also enabling those participating in-person in Salt Lake City to see what’s happening virtually around the world,” said Jen Allen, director of events at FamilySearch, in a press release.

To help those interested in family history and researching their ancestors, FamilySearch has added a variety of research options to its services, according to information released Tuesday. In 2022, the website added billions of freely searchable records to help its visitors make new family discoveries.

The cadence of gathering and publishing the world’s genealogical records online increased with a focus on select countries and a major US Census project. A new online volunteer tool was also introduced, which, coupled with artificial intelligence and handwriting recognition technology, will vastly increase the searchability rate of non-English documents.

The National Archives and Records Administration of the United States released the 1950 US Census for public access in 2022. The census contains records of more than 150 million Americans and will be one of the most popular databases for online genealogical research in the USA. FamilySearch engaged online volunteers to help create a robust index to make the census highly searchable and discoverable — for free.

The new FamilySearch Get Involved online volunteer experience, coupled with FamilySearch’s state-of-the-art handwriting recognition artificial intelligence technology, is changing the future of family discovery. It promises to make billions more historical records freely discoverable online — particularly non-English genealogical records, according to FamilySearch.

Over 100 million records have already been made searchable at FamilySearch.org since Get Involved was launched, and more records are being added in additional languages for volunteers to review.

FamilySearch Family Tree boasts the addition of more than 80 million new ancestors and 360 million additional sources in 2022, making it the world’s largest online family tree.

Some of the other new FamilySearch Family Tree features added in 2022 include:

• A “First Ancestor” pedigree view allows users to connect to a first ancestor in the Tree and then build or see their children in each generation, down to the current generation.
• The new default Person Page enables users to record and learn all about their ancestors, from basic personal details to sources, memories, a time line, and more. Users can now customize the Details tab, add a request to be alerted when new notes are added, publish a life sketch, and more.

FamilySearch added nearly 2 billion searchable names and images in 2022 from ancestral homelands worldwide for a total of 16.9 billion free historical records and images, according to the FamilySearch statement.

In 2022, FamilySearch added 19,264 books to its FamilySearch Digital Library collection of scanned books, bringing the total collection now to over 550,000 full-text searchable books (family histories, local histories, school yearbooks, and other genealogical types of books). The search feature has been significantly enhanced with tools that enable additional search fields and text highlighting, and image viewing and sharing.

For those who are new to searching their family history, FamilySearch’s online help center is available. From personal discoveries, searching records, creating a family tree, or having family history fun, this page can help patrons get started making family discoveries.

To register for the conference, people can visit http://rootstech.org. The virtual event is free. The in-person event is $98 for the 3-day pass.

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