About the FamilySearch Centre - Located at 701 Mann Ave.

(Lower level ---- side of building)

The Victoria FamilySearch Centre provides free one-on-one assistance, training, and research expertise, plus convenient access to family history resources. Also it:

  • offers families, including youth, experiences that will turn their hearts to their ancestors.
  • helps youth and families to recognize that we all belong and we all have a valuable story worth sharing and preserving.
  • inspires and helps members and community patrons engage in family history activities, including sharing and preserving family stories and photos, indexing, plus as a research centre, it helps members prepare to submit their own ancestors names to the temple.

Why Family History?

The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-Day Saints has been gathering and preserving Family History records for over 100 years, as well, it has over 5000 Family History Centers, just like ours, all around the world. This is all provided free because the Church realizes and emphasizes the importance of family relationships. We believe that families can be united for eternity... long past this earthly life which is part of an eternal existence that began long before we were born, when we lived with God as His spirit children.

Collections at the Centre

  • FamilySearch Catalog: Most films and Fiche are no longer available as they can be found online.
  • Most reference materials such as reference books can be found on line. The Centre has a small reference library.

Family History Centre Equipment

Databases and Software

FSC Portal. This centre has access to the FamilySearch Centre Portal page which gives free access in the centre to premium family history software and websites that generally charge for subscriptions.

Premium Databases Include the following:

  • 19th Century British Library Newspaper Digital Archive
  • Alexander Street Press
  • The American Civil War: Research Database, Letters and Diaries, Images, Photographs, Posters, and Ephemera, Social and Cultural History, Women and Social Movements in the United States
  • Ancestry.com - Institution version
  • Archive Digital
  • Findmypast - Institution version
  • Fold3.com
  • Kinpoint - Premium
  • MyHeritage - Library Edition
  • Paper Trail
  • ProQuest Obituary Listings
  • Puzzilla.org - Premium Services
  • World Vital Records- All content has been added to MyHeritage.com (They purchased WVR)
  • We also have database programs for information storing of your genealogical work such as PAF (Personal Ancestral File), Legacy, Roots Magic, and Ancestral Quest to name a few. We have the deluxe paid versions at our centre. You may want to download the basic free version for use at home.

Hardware and Equipment

Our centre has 13 computers, 3 printers, 1 fiche reader, 8 film readers and a multi functional digital copier/scanner/printer. We recently added 4 new computers to replace old computers.