The Internet has revolutionized Family History, making it possible to learn things about our ancestors and the communities that they lived in that would previously have been impossible.  The NZ Family History Network exists to support any individual, family, or group that has genealogy or family history information to share with others over the Internet, or that wants to participate in the global on-line community of people with an interest in New Zealand Family History.

How will we do this?
    By supporting project teams creating useful databases and other resources of interest to family historians
    By supporting others with useful on line databases, and as far as possible integrating them with other databases to simplify searches    
    By operating web sites, and linking to many other web sites
    By continuing to develop more facilities to support the family history community.

After about a year of development FamNet is now being launched.  Already it offers some great facilities, particularly for database hosting where, like the related site NZGDB, it is able to manage databases for their owners, keeping them separate and preserving ownership rights while integrating them with the work of others.  Click the [General Database Search] button to get access to these databases.   More and more databases are becoming available as groups and individuals see the value in working together in the FamNet community.   Expect also more development of facilities for group communication - blogs, wikis, web sites, etc - as funds for this become available.

What's New

July 2010:

A database of about 1700 pictures and documents of WW1 soldiers is now on line.

June 2010:

Peter Nash's indexes of Hokianga cemeteries have been added into the Cemetery databases. FamNet now records details of 17 cemeteries, up from 3. More are coming.

NZGDB has implemented a facility to display genealogy charts - descendents, ancestors, and hourglass - from any of its 14M records

What does FamNet Cost?

FamNet is currently free, but some of the collections that it hosts are not. For example, to open records within NZGDB, or use GDBChart, you must be a subscriber to that database. Whether a resource is free or not is up to the particular data owner.

After an introductory period it is likely that free access to FamNet's collections will be restricted to members of participating groups, so that further development of the site can be supported.

For more information about FamNet, have a look at the Overview Powerpoint, and then explore this site further.