Archival digitization has expanded genealogy research from local finding aids into billions of searchable names, images, pages, and books. The figures below show the scale of major programs, how quickly collections have grown, what remains in progress, and how people turn scans into usable family-history evidence.
Contents
- Online archival genealogy resources
- Production over time
- Coverage, projects, and backlogs
- Access and reuse
- Costs and throughput
- Volunteers and indexing
Online archival genealogy resources
FamilySearch reported 16.93 billion searchable names in historical records, 5.89 billion digital images, and 675,938 digital books available online. These figures were updated September 8, 2026, so they describe the service at that measurement point rather than a timeless total. FamilySearch also reported 6,642 FamilySearch Centers worldwide and 25.99 million monthly visits. (FamilySearch.org Facts)
The U.S. National Archives provides another view of scale. As of August 24, 2026, its catalog contained 532,047,895 digitized pages. The National Archives also reported 18.9 million digital images in the Digital Public Library of America and 3 million images in Wikipedia and Wikimedia Commons. Those distribution figures indicate that digitized archival material can reach researchers through several discovery systems, not only the institution’s own catalog. (National Archives by the Numbers)
These counts are not interchangeable. A searchable name is an indexed access point, a digital image is a visual copy, a catalog page is a counted page, and a digital book is a publication-level object. For genealogy, the practical question is therefore not simply how many items exist, but whether the relevant record has an image, an index, useful metadata, and a route to the original collection.
Production over time
Historical production figures show how digitization can accumulate in large increments. In 2016, FamilySearch used 320 camera teams working in 45 countries and digitally preserved more than 60 million records. The program added 125 new historical collections and 59.5 million online digitized record images that year. At year-end 2016, FamilySearch reported 1.22 billion online digitized record images. (FamilySearch 2016 Year in Review)
The National Archives reported the following digitized catalog-page totals by fiscal year:
| Measurement period | Digitized catalog pages |
|---|---|
| FY 2016 | 16.5 million |
| FY 2017 | 36.5 million |
| FY 2018 | 53.1 million |
| FY 2019 | 92.6 million |
(FY 2021 Annual Performance Plan and FY 2019 Annual Performance Report)
The year labels matter: these are fiscal-year reported totals, not a single consistent annual production-rate series. They still show the change in reported cumulative digitized catalog pages over the period. FamilySearch’s 2016 figures similarly describe one year of activity and a year-end stock, so the additions should not be added to the year-end total as if they were separate collections.
Coverage, projects, and backlogs
Digitization statistics often reveal both completed work and the size of the work still underway. The National Archives committed to digitize 500 million pages and make them available online by September 30, 2026. This is a strategic-plan target for 2022–2026, not a statement that the target was already achieved. (Digitization at the National Archives)
The Smithsonian’s 2023 digitization program reported 5,459,750 specimens or objects digitized and 4,998,329 images captured. It had completed 46 digitization projects and had 7 active projects. The program said it had digitized 5.5 million objects and specimens across 15 museums and archives since 2013. (Annual Report 2023)
The same 2023 report illustrates why a headline total does not mean that every collection is finished. The Smithsonian was digitizing more than 60,000 catalog cards at Cooper Hewitt and had digitized more than 50,000 freshwater mussels. It also planned a project to digitize 12,800 additional marine invertebrate fossils. The last figure is a planned quantity, so it should be read as a forecast or project scope rather than completed output. (Annual Report 2023)
For family historians, this distinction affects search strategy. A collection can be represented in an institutional program while still having no public image for a particular item. Conversely, a large image count may not provide name-level access if indexing or descriptive metadata has not caught up with scanning.
Access and reuse
Europeana offered access to more than 52 million digitized cultural heritage objects in its 2020–2021 reporting period. Its repository grew by 4.6%, equivalent to almost 2.3 million additional records in the reporting year. The collection mix was dominated by images at 56.2% and text at 41.3%; sound represented 1.5%, video 1.0%, and 3D content 0.03%. (Europeana DSI-4 Annual Report 2019-2020)
Reuse rights are another measure of practical access. Europeana reported that 48.4% of its objects were in the public domain or licensed for free reuse during that reporting period. That percentage does not mean that the remaining objects are unusable for personal research; it distinguishes reuse status, which can affect copying, publishing, or incorporating material into a family-history project. (Europeana DSI-4 Annual Report 2019-2020)
For genealogists, images and text serve different roles. An image can preserve handwriting, marginal notes, seals, and page context. Text can make names discoverable at scale. The Europeana composition figures show why both formats matter, while the rights figure shows why discovery and permitted reuse are separate questions.
Costs and throughput
The Smithsonian’s 2015 rapid-capture project digitized 274,340 currency proof sheets. The team processed nearly 3,500 currency proof sheets per day, reported a digitization cost of less than $1 per sheet, and completed the project in 4.5 months. These are project-specific figures for currency proof sheets, not a universal cost or speed for every archival format. (Smithsonian Institution 2015 Annual Report)
The Archives of American Art created 142,462 digital images in fiscal year 2019, including 26,566 images through digitization on demand. Its digitization endowment exceeded $11 million in 2019, while federal funding covered 35% of annual operating costs. (Annual Report OCTOBER 1, 2018—SEPTEMBER 30, 2019)
| Program or measure | Reported figure | Period or scope |
|---|---|---|
| Smithsonian rapid capture | 274,340 proof sheets | 2015 project |
| Smithsonian rapid-capture throughput | Nearly 3,500 sheets per day | 2015 project |
| Smithsonian rapid-capture cost | Less than $1 per sheet | 2015 project |
| Archives of American Art images | 142,462 images | FY 2019 |
| Archives of American Art on-demand images | 26,566 images | FY 2019 |
The comparison shows why “cost per scan” should be treated cautiously. A standardized, rapidly captured object can have a different workflow from fragile manuscripts, bound volumes, oversized maps, photographs, or records requiring conservation and detailed description. On-demand work also measures a service responding to researcher demand, not only a large batch-production pipeline.
Volunteers and indexing
Digitization becomes much more useful to genealogists when people index the resulting images. FamilySearch volunteers indexed 274.8 million records in 2016. After that year, the organization reported 2.4 billion indexed records, including 872 million non-English indexed records. During 2016, volunteers indexed 36 million newly indexed records in languages other than English. (FamilySearch 2016 Year in Review)
The labor behind those totals was substantial. FamilySearch had 4,807 volunteer missionaries supporting its worldwide operation in 2016, and those missionaries donated 3.8 million hours. Nearly 315,000 non-missionary online volunteers logged nearly 11 million hours for FamilySearch indexing. (FamilySearch 2016 Year in Review)
Access also had a large user base. FamilySearch received 133 million online visits in 2016 and reported 7.3 million registered users at year-end. More than 561,000 new contributors added to FamilySearch Family Tree in 2016, bringing the reported total to 3.45 million Family Tree contributors after the year. The Family Tree contained 1.1 billion individual records linked at year-end 2016, while the Research Wiki contained more than 100,000 helpful articles. (FamilySearch 2016 Year in Review)
These measures describe different layers of genealogy access: visits measure use, registered users measure accounts, contributors measure participation, linked records measure connected data, and indexed records measure discoverability in historical materials. Keeping those categories separate helps researchers interpret archival digitization statistics without treating every large number as the same kind of evidence.