Ancestry.org

A fundamental element of any person seeking their genealogy is the International Genealogical Index or IGI.

The IGI is a search tool for a computer file that lists hundreds of millions of names of deceased persons worldwide.

It also lists key information, such as birth or the date and place of marriage.

Many names in the index are transcriptions of vital records in the early 1500s to 1885. Others have been submitted by members of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints, also known as Mormons.

The IGI is available on the Internet, on compact disc (CD), and microfiche.

Copies of the IGI is available at any LDS Family History Center worldwide, or one set of Genealogical Societies and the capital city's most public libraries.

He is merely an index of Mormon temple work for individuals, which explains why there are often multiple entries for the same person.

LDS Church members often have submitted names for the temple to do work without first having found if this has been done before.

There are several reasons why it was very difficult to do in the past.

There seems to be a general recognition that there are two main types of entries in the IGI, those presented by members of the church (often called clients) and those extracted directly from original records.

family historians and other researchers tend to trust these entries, and it is relatively easy to verify the original source. If you use the IGI microfiche, these inflows have generally taken a lot number beginning with C or M or some other letter, but some begin with numbers.

The edition on CD-ROM provides fairly comprehensive information for each entry. But if you use the IGI on the sheet is no substitute for detailed reading of the materials on this subject.

For anyone with an Internet connection, the IGS can be found online at: www.familysearch.org . It is absolutely free.