Ancestry.com and the Associated Press Bring Historical AP Archives Online

(Provo, Utah) – November 18, 2013 - Ancestry.com, the world’s largest online family history resource, is proud to announce a collaboration with the Associated Press that makes fifty years of news stories--in their original wire copy format--available online today.

“We are thrilled to announce this collaboration with the Associated Press to bring its name and subject catalog online,” said Quinton Atkinson, Director of Content Acquisition for Ancestry.com. “It represents a fantastic set of material for our family historians who are researching the news of an era, and gives incredible historical context for the world their ancestors lived in.”

Available at Ancestry.com/AP, the voluminous card catalog of names and subjects links to more than two million records and more than one million AP stories spanning 1937 to 1985, a resource which took Ancestry.com several years to prepare and digitize. 

For Ancestry.com subscribers, the collection of AP stories adds a whole new dimension to the family history experience. Stories complement family trees and genealogical records on Ancestry.com with period news coverage that provides historical context to the times, places and people Ancestry members are researching. Ancestry.com members will be able to search for stories by name, and then click through to view a digitized copy of the full AP story. Stories can also be searched by subject and by date.

The digitization of the AP stories will simplify the research process not only for Ancestry.com members, but also for AP journalists. Reporters and news researchers can now bypass the legacy card catalog and accompanying microfilm for a searchable set of online databases that can be accessed anywhere in the world. In addition, the project has made available a set of internal AP publications dating back to 1904, including the staff magazine AP World, which began publication in 1943.

“The collaboration with Ancestry.com has enabled us to bring AP’s historical news microfilm and its card index not only to the family history community but also to AP journalists, who value their organization’s rich archival record,” said Valerie Komor, Director of the AP Corporate Archives. 

“And AP World offers a rare view into the workings of this 167-year-old news cooperative.“

For those wishing to search the AP archives on Ancestry.com, they may do so by visiting Ancestry.com/AP. For those looking to start researching their own family history, please visit www.ancestry.com.