Searching the FamilySearch Digital Library

What is the FamilySearch Digital Library
The FamilySearch Digital Library is a large online library of genealogical resources. Visitors can read hundreds of thousands of online books, periodicals, and associated resources from all over the world.

Basic Search
For basic instructions on using the Digital Library, click here.

Advanced Search
The FamilySearch Digital Library normally finds items (books and periodicals) that contain all specified words. The words are not necessarily close to one another. Use operators, wildcards, and field names for better control.

Operators provide greater flexibility. Search words can be upper- or lowercase, but operators must be uppercase.

Digital Library normally searches all the text of all books. Field operators restrict searching to matching titles, authors, subjects or other metadata fields. Specify the name of the field with a leading capital letter, a colon, and the word to search for. In addition to the other operators, the minus sign can be used with a field to return all books that do not have the word specified. Complex combinations of operators allow powerful searches.