The Ancestor Hunt regularly adds and updates new collection links, as well as searches for and fixes broken links.
(This page's most recent update is January 2026)
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One resource that should be used more by family history researchers is genealogy books. There are hundreds of thousands of local history, family history, and genealogy books that have been published. A large percentage have been digitized, and even more, are on library shelves and can be borrowed – either from a local library, a university library, or a genealogical or historical society library. Many can be made available via interlibrary loan as well. And even more, are made available by subscription genealogy databases.
Free Online Genealogy and History Books
- The Digital Public Library of America—a free national digital library with online contents from over 4,000 libraries.
- FamilySearch Digital Library—over 500,000 books and other digitized items are available online.
- Google Books has over 10 million titles available. There are two basic types—books that have been digitized and all pages are available to view; and titles where only a snippet preview is available.
- Hathitrust is a collaboration between academic and research libraries. It has over 17 million digitized items. There are two types of results—”Full View” and “Limited (search only)”
- HeritageQuest Online—available only via libraries; a library card is required to use this resource. It has a sizable book collection of family histories, plus a number of varying categories of genealogy records. A detailed description of its contents can be found HERE
- The Internet Archive—similar to the collections above, the Archive has over 20 million books and texts available. It also has a sizable number that can be borrowed for a short time.
Subscription Required Sources of Genealogy Books
- American Ancestors—the Research Library has a sizable collection of Local History and Family History Books.
- Ancestry—the Stories, Memories, and Histories section has over 23,000 entries.
- FindMyPast—has a section of their database entitled “Directories and Social History” that contains a number of different types of publications, including directories, family histories, almanacs and social history.
- MyHeritage—available are books and publications; biographies, family histories, and local and general history publications. Also avail- able is a Compilation of Published Sources
Library Sources of Genealogy Books
- Genealogy Libraries—specialty libraries, such as the Allen County Public Library Genealogy Center in Fort Wayne, Indiana. Over 100,000 books are available on the Allen County Library Page on the Internet Archive, for example.
- Genealogical and Historical Societies—local, county, and state societies all have a library full of books, many of course pertaining to the local area.
- College and University Libraries—collections relating to the local area as well as the state are worth looking in to.
- WorldCat—in essence, connects thousands of libraries catalogs together in one searchable database.
- Interlibrary Loan—most libraries have an Interlibrary Loan Program, where you can borrow the book from a distant library for a short time.
Curated County Histories
- Empty Branches on the Family Tree—has a curated a list of free, out-of-copyright books about local and state histories. These links will save you a lot of time searching many different collections and databases.
If you’d like this information in a clean, printable, and well-organized reference format, this topic is also included in the Quicksheet Vault. The Vault is designed for researchers who prefer working tools they can save, print, and reuse—whether that means building a personal binder of key resources or keeping reliable references close at hand. You can learn more about the Quicksheet Vault HERE