What’s On at Midland Ancestors –
Birmingham: FamilySearch Full-Text Search
Sat 11th April @ 2:00 pm - 3:30 pm BST
FamilySearch Full-Text Search
Speaker: Janet Summers
‘Using a step-by-step guide, Janet will demonstrate how this method broke through her own research “brick walls” by locating copies of probated wills.
This presentation expands on the article Janet wrote for the Midland Ancestor published in June 2025 Vol. 20 No. 10 page 589 – Family Search Full-Text – A Research Game Changer?’
FamilySearch.org has billions of historical records that have been digitized, but only a portion of these record images are currently searchable. A full-text search for historical records uses artificial intelligence (AI) to transcribe images into text so they can be fully searched. This automated search will find information almost instantly, saving hours of manual searching. Using handwriting recognition software, FamilySearch.org can convert an image of text into a machine-readable format. This gives you the ability to search the full text of these records before they are even indexed.