16 Places Where You Can Find Genealogy and Family History Books

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 content 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 its database entitled “Directories and Social History” that contains several 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 available 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 about the local area.
• College and University Libraries—collections relating to the local area as well as the state are worth looking into.
• WorldCat—in essence, connects thousands of library catalogs together in one searchable database.
• Interlibrary Loan—most libraries have an Interlibrary Loan Program, where you can borrow a 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.

Download the Quicksheet PDF

To obtain the free Quicksheet pdf with 16 places where you can access genealogy books, you can download it by clicking on the Download button below:

For all the previously published Quick Reference Guides, click on QuickSheets. 

Genealogy QuickSheets – Frequently Asked Questions