Ancestry Announces Renewal of Their Digitization Partnership Agreement With NARA

I just got the following from Matthew Deighton at Ancestry. This is goods news. Ancestry & NARA had problems with their digitization projects a while back when it was found that an employee had destroyed records. That looks to have been resolved… Whew…

We are pleased to announce the renewal of our digitization partnership agreement with the National Archives and Record Administration. Ancestry began digitizing images from NARA in 2000. Since our partner digitization agreement in 2008, Ancestry has invested millions of dollars in scanning original paper documents. It has been a great privilege to work alongside NARA staff and help preserve America’s history one document at a time.

According to a recent audit report by NARA, external partners are responsible for 97% of all document digitization occurring at the National Archives. Ancestry has been and continues to be the largest digitization partner since the partnership program began. How much work has Ancestry done with NARA? To date we have published 1,371 collections now available online. That’s over 170 million images and more than 1 billion records searchable from home. Most importantly these digital records are now preserved indefinitely for future generations.

Ancestry scanning teams have digitized collections in nine different National Archives and Records Administration facilities across the country including Washington D.C., New York City, and St. Louis, Missouri. The digitization services Ancestry provides are at no cost to the federal government. With investments in scanning and indexing reaching more than 1 billion records, we have saved taxpayers more than $100 million dollars at commercial digitization rates.

This agreement marks the renewing of a great partnership and we are proud to continue our relationship with the United States National Archives and Record Administration.

Matthew Deighton
Public Relations Manager
Ancestry.com

About Leland Meitzler

Leland K. Meitzler founded Heritage Quest in 1985, and has worked as Managing Editor of both Heritage Quest Magazine and The Genealogical Helper. He currently operates Family Roots Publishing Company (www.FamilyRootsPublishing.com), writes daily at GenealogyBlog.com, writes the weekly Genealogy Newsline, conducts the annual Salt Lake Christmas Tour to the Family History Library, and speaks nationally, having given over 2000 lectures since 1983.

One Reply to “Ancestry Announces Renewal of Their Digitization Partnership Agreement With NARA”

  1. I’ve had the pleasure to see some of the up-close and personal about Ancestry.com and I am confident that the dedicated team that makes up the Ancestry.com family will continue to revolutionize the spiderweb of interconnections with their diligent efforts to connect the dots for individuals across time.

    The fact that an organization has established a business model that allows them to crowd-fund this digitization effort at no cost to the United States government is incredible and I am grateful for their ongoing efforts.

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