FamilySearch Get Involved

FamilySearch International

About this app

Historical records—like immigration papers and birth certificates—can help people learn interesting and valuable insights about their family.

Problem is, many of those insights are locked away in documents that are not easily searchable.

FamilySearch Get Involved provides simple tools to unlock the family names in those documents so they can be searched online for free.


How it works
FamilySearch uses sophisticated scanning technology to find ancestor names in historical records. Most of the time the computer can recognize the correct name. But it can’t always get it right.


Using FamilySearch Get Involved, anyone can quickly review names in historical records and verify what the computer found or flag any errors. Each name that gets corrected is a person that can now be found by their living family.

• Help people find their ancestors online.
• Focus on a country that is important to you.
• Give back to the genealogy community.
• Use spare time in a meaningful way.

Even correcting just one name makes a big difference. The names you will see in the Get Involved app are real people that have been lost to history until now. With your help, these people can be reunited with their family across generations.

Ratings and reviews

It's fun to use. Features I like include the ability to zoom out and see more text. I have two features to request: the ability to go back to a previous name, and the ability to change the contrast and balance of the displayed image. One thing that wasn't clear to me at first was that the "enter" key on my keyboard was meant to be used for entering "match" after editing.

Love the idea but it is frustrating when it has you review the same name 3 or 4 times at the same place on the page, without moving to a new highlight. It would also be nice to have more instruction before starting. I only found I could say incorrect highlight or not a person because I was curious what the flag meant. A lot of people probably don't know. I would also like to be able to edit the name while zoomed out so I can see the whole name.

Having to press the back button is time consuming for this activity. Then you have access to the match button. If I tap on the word block where I am to verify the match I am able to type in the correct letters. I was not even going back to the edit button to type in the correct letters. Did it save the my work or send it to the next person? A little bit more instructions would help. If you are using the computer to write instructions, the usumtion of knowing all steps is not serving well. Thanks

What's new

Performance improvements and bug fixes.