International Genealogical Index



The International Genealogical Index (IGI) is a computer file created by The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints. It was first published in 1973 and continued to grow through December 2008. It contains several hundred million entries, each recording one event, such as a birth, baptism (christening), marriage, or death.

Information in the IGI came from two sources:

1. Some of the entries in the IGI were indexed by the genealogical community from collections of vital and church records (approx. 460 million names). Indexed records are valuable sources of primary information. Unfortunately, attempts to prevent duplication resulted in the exclusion of some indexed records.

2. Some of the information in the IGI was contributed by members of the Church about their ancestors (approx. 430 million names). The quality of this information varies. Duplicate entries and inconsistent information are common. Always verify contributed entries against sources of primary information.

Accessing the International Genealogical Index
Over the years, access to the IGI has advanced with technology. First available on microfiche, the IGI was subsequently available on compact disc and later as a collection on the Internet.

Today, FamilySearch publishes hundreds of collections of vital and church records for many locations throughout the world. Indexed entries from the IGI are treated consistently with other indexed records, published by country or state and organized into the record collections they were trasncribed from.

Performing a regular search on FamilySearch.org will search both IGI indexed records along with billions of more recently indexed records. To search just the entries from the International Genealogical Index, select the “International Genealogical Index (IGI)” collection from the list of historical record collections. From the collection page you may choose to search either community indexed entries or community contributed entries.

Limitations
The International Genealogical Index is a finding aid. Always check original sources. Entries often do not contain all the information in the original records, such as death dates or names of additional relatives. Sometimes only portions of parish records or other sources were indexed.

Today’s implementation of the International Genealogical Index addresses key deficiencies in the previous implementation. However, it is not able to correct all of them.

1. Previously, the IGI could not be searched by city or parish name, but only by country and one subdivision (such as U.S. state or U.K. county). Users compensated by searching by batch number. While batch number searching is still supported, most users will prefer searching by name instead of number.

2. Previously, indexed entries and community contributed entries were mixed into a single collection. The reliability of the two is different, so users needed to know the source of each result. Users compensated by examining the first digit of the batch number of each result. Batch number charts assisted users in recognizing indexed (“extracted”) entries and user contributed entries. Today, the two types are searched separately, assisting users to distinguish between them.

3. While it grew to contain a tremendous amount of duplication, the IGI was originally envisioned as a file containing just one entry for each birth and each marriage that has ever occurred. When new records were indexed, entries were discarded that duplicated existing IGI entries. To compensate for this limitation, when an entry is not found among indexed entries, search the community contributed entries as well.

4. The original sources for entries in the IGI are not shown. For an indexed entry, look up the film number in the FamilySearch or Family History Library catalog. For a community contributed entry, the contributor may or may not have specified a source. See “Finding the Source of IGI Batch Numbers” for more information.

History
For more information see Ancestry Insider, “When was the IGI?” The Ancestry Insider dated 4 January 2011).