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The Family History Centre in London, located at The National Archives (TNA) in Kew, closed on 23 March, with TNA becoming a FamilySearch Affiliate Library.
The centre, which opened at TNA in 2011, provided access to the online records at family search.org and one-on-one volunteer support.
Brian McKechnie, Family History Centre logistics specialist at FamilySearch, told Who Do You Think You Are? Magazine that the decision to close the centre had been made following a drop in visitor numbers of about 40 per cent over the past five years, because people increasingly access family history records at home.
He added that approximately 75 per cent of visitors didn’t require personalised assistance from the FamilySearch volunteers, and the number of full-time volunteers at the centre decreased from eight to four in the same period. Many volunteers worked there on two-year assignments, and moved near TNA to do so.
Under the Affiliate Library arrangement, TNA visitors will still be able to enjoy the same access to the digitised records on FamilySearch, including images of the original documents, on its computers if they have a free FamilySearch account. The only practical difference is the absence of full-time volunteers, although volunteers will visit regularly.
The Family History Centre also held 57,000 microfilms until June 2017, when it was required to downsize as part of redevelopment work at TNA. It transferred all of the microfilms to the Society of Genealogists in Clerkenwell, which also became an Affiliate Library. All of the microfilm has now been digitised as part of FamilySearch’s digitisation programme.
McKechnie said: “Our base at Kew was always intended to be a temporary solution.”
He added that FamilySearch is still looking for a location for a facility in the capital, and is pursuing further options. “We definitely want to have a dedicated FamilySearch presence in Central London,” he said.
A TNA spokesperson said: “Due to advances in technology, FamilySearch can now provide its services to visitors at TNA more flexibly. TNA and FamilySearch have enjoyed a very successful partnership which will continue to provide a valuable resource for everyone researching their family history.”
Run by the Church of Jesus Christ of Latterday Saints, FamilySearch is the world’s largest free family history website. It surpassed two billion records last year, including parish records, censuses, British Newspaper Archive ( britishnewspaperarchive.co.uk) family notices and obituaries, and more. It has more than 4,500 Family History Centres around the world, with over 100 in the UK.
The company is planning to digitise its entire collection of 2.4 million rolls of microfilm by 2020 in order to make its records more accessible. In August 2017 it ended its micro-fil-morde-ring programme after announcing that it had digitised the bulk of the collection. The original microfilms will remain stored in a vault inside Granite Mountain, Utah.
‘Our base at Kew was always intended to be temporary’