About the FamilySearch Centre

The Victoria Family History 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: This centre has the ability to order any of the films and fiche available through the FamilySearch Catalog for you to view.
  • Over 2800 Permanent Films for viewing in the centre.
  • Thousands of books and fiche all dealing with research from all parts of the world.
  • Up to date film indexes for Ontario.
  • An Extended films and fiche database of all the extended films in our center. It is organized by country for easy searching.

Family History Centre Equipment

Databases and Software

FHC Portal This centre has access to the Family History 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 11 computers, 3 printers, 1 fiche reader, 8 film readers and a multi functional digital copier/scanner/printer. We recently added (2016) 10 new computers with Windows 7 Professional to replace old computers.

Family History Centre Equipment