Ancestry.com digitizes 17M vital records under Indiana deal

INDIANAPOLIS (AP) – Nearly 17 million Indiana genealogy records have been digitized through a partnership between state officials and Ancestry.com.

The records scanned mostly from microfilm rolls cover birth and death certificates dating back to the early 1900s and marriage records from 1958 through 2005. Death certificates also were digitized.

State Archivist Jim Corridan says Ancestry.com’s agreement with Indiana specifies that the records cannot be made available free online for three years so the genealogy website can recoup its costs of digitizing the records.

Those records can be accessed either by purchasing an Ancestry.com subscription or by visiting the Indiana State Archives in Indianapolis, where copies of the records can be obtained for 25 cents each.

Information from the records can also be provided over the phone to callers.