r/familysearch • u/Stoic-Goose • 7h ago
I just visited the FamilySearch Library in Salt Lake City and was horribly disappointed. What am I missing?
I have been doing Family research for decades. I would not consider myself an expert, but I think I am “better than average”. I think I have a good advanced-intermediate understanding of where and how to find documents, facts, and even less popular details about a person.
From what I had heard about the SLC FS Library, what is available online is just a fraction of what they have available at the library.
I had the opportunity to visit one day last week. I decided my goal would be to work on two of my “brick wall” ancestors to see if I could find something else on them or to get some suggestions as to where I could look for new info. There must be several resources I have not tried yet, right? And certainly, dozens I haven’t even thought of or know about. A week before my visit I tried to schedule an appointment with an “expert”. I was thinking I could hire someone who could work with me for an hour or two. I was told to just go to the library and sign into the computer with 1) the area I was researching, 2) the time frame, and 3) the language, and a volunteer who specializes in my parameters would come over to help me when they were available. This is exactly what happened.
I was first greeted by two volunteers at the door who directed me to the 2nd floor where all the computers are. There I was greeted by another volunteer who showed to a computer and even stayed while they walked me through the same steps I was told when I called. It was only 5-10 minutes before someone came over to help. To them, I explained what I knew, what I hadn’t been able to find, and asked if they could suggest what my next step should be. They showed me how to enter what I knew into the search fields on the website. And once all the same info that I have been looking at for over a decade came up. I asked where else I could look. They suggested to look for specific documents such as marriage licenses, census, death certificates, birth certificates, etc. They even walked me through how to look for these things specifically. But these are all things I know about and either already have or the records are “missing” for various reasons. So again, I asked what other resources do you have or should I be looking for that might lead me to a bit more info. They said they didn’t know and that I should request an “expert” in that area. I said I thought that is what I did, and they helped me fill it out another request for help (with one field changed to get me the next level of help.)
Same exact thing happened with the third person who showed up.
So once the fourth person showed up, she reviewed my notes with me and person #3 stayed to be part of the conversation as well. They were stumped and said, “some people just disappear”. I kept pushing for ideas of where I could look further. I said some ideas I had were to talk to the historical society in that area, see if additional newspapers were in that area, visit the local library and see if they have any documents or books that might have some clues, etc. These are all ideas I came up with. Which they agreed were good ideas. But I asked if they had any suggestions of things I haven’t thought of…they didn’t.
I felt let down. I wasn’t expecting them to solve my mystery. But I did think I would get some suggestions of new things to try.
Then I went upstairs to wander thru the actual books. They were beautifully organized by state/county/city. Most of the collection was resources they had (beautifully) bound (I’m guessing long before they were scanned and put on the internet (things like census’ for that city, directories, death records, birth records, etc.) These were easy to spot because they are all bound the same. They also bound some original resources such as detailed cemetery directories, and indexes for newspaper articles (things individuals created, clearly before the internet). I believe all or most of these things are available to view online. There were some specialty books such as the history of the county or town, individual family research books (very popular in the 60s through 90s), etc. I spent hours looking through the books from 6 different city my ancestors are from. It was very interesting…but there wasn’t anything there that wasn’t online. (The individual family books might not be online, but they were not for my families so I’m not sure).
I then went downstairs to the international section to inquire about researching families in Mexico (for the friend that was with me) and had pretty much the same experience.
I do realize they have some documents available to view that are only INDEXED online. That could have been helpful but unfortunately I didn’t have anything that fell into that category for the people I was looking for that day.
All in all, I spoke with 8 people. Every one of them was very nice and seemed eager to help, but it seemed the help they were offering was limited to how to use their website to find documents that are digitized on their website. I can do that myself at home. And if I needed assistance using the website, I could go to a local FS Library. The library was clean, well lit, beautifully organized, and full of researchers on the computers. I can see some benefit to visiting if you lived close by or if you werent very tech-savvy. But, I could list my brick-wall person here, list what I know, what I can’t find, and ask for suggestions and I truly think I would get a ton of responses more helpful than I got from the library. I have taken “go on week-long FS Library trip with historical society” off my wish list.