The world's largest index to genealogical indexes -and much more.

The Family History Library Catalog (FHLC) is an index and bibliography to all of the genealogical indexes in the world’s largest genealogical library. Its listing of original sources on microfilms and microfiche, or now as digitized images, is carefully arranged for each locality from the world, including the following: towns and villages, townships, counties and parishes, states and provinces, regions and countries. Indexes are available for most levels of record keeping, but most genealogists want to begin with those which are national or statewide.

For each locality, however, the descriptions of historical documents are further divided by record types or topics. The Top 30 headings are posted separately in this Group. Note that they are based on the system of the Library of Congress!

So a logical choice for someone starting with indexes, say for lost ancestors from North Carolina, would be to look for locality subject headings such as North Carolina – Vital Records – Indexes, or North Carolina – Land records – Indexes. The subject heading of “Genealogy” is usually reserved for collections of compiled genealogies (not original records), perhaps covering many counties.