The digiarchives contain material that genealogists will find interesting. E.g. communion and childrens books are easily available for researching at home.
The members' image database contains church archives with a time limit of 100 years, with the exception of lists of the deceased and buried, for which the time limit is 50 years. In addition to church archives, there is a wide variety of other material, such as records from public administration (including court records, military documents and materials from police departments) as well as private archives.
The digitizers are genealogists who digitize material that they're interested in. We recommend a broadband connection for viewing the site.
A great deal of the pictures are digitized from microfilms of the original archived material. They've been digitized by using a microfilm scanner after which they've been uploaded to the site. Possible double pictures on the microfilms have been left out. Some of the sources have been photographed from the original church records by our volunteers. The aim is to increase the share of the pictures taken from the original material due to their good quality.
A majority of of the material has been indexed and for example many communion books have an index with names of villages and houses. These names are written as found on the original documents and they might contain mistakes, but they help you find the picture you're looking for faster. Members who are able to read old handwriting can supplement the indexes online in the members’ image database using the Muokkaa (Edit) command. The command currently works only on the Finnish-language pages.
If you're not familiar with the different types of books, we suggest reading through Research Tips for Finnish Genealogy on our member pages or Finding records of your ancestors in Finland part of the Resource Directory List / Finland on the The Federation of East European Family History Societies website.