Most people plan a genealogy trip to Salt Lake City the way they would plan a trip to any big attraction.
Book a flight, pick a hotel, and figure out the details once they land. That approach works fine for a theme park.
It does not work as well for the FamilySearch Library.
The FamilySearch Library, formerly known as the Family History Library, holds the largest collection of genealogical records in the world.
People fly in from every state and dozens of countries every year to spend a few days there chasing down a name, a village, or a single missing generation.
Some walk out having broken through a wall that stood for twenty years.
Others spend three days wandering the building without much to show for it, mostly because they never built a plan before they arrived.
This guide is for the second group, before they become the second group.
It covers how to get your family tree ready before you leave home, how to book help ahead of time, and what to actually expect once you walk through the doors on West Temple Street.
What the FamilySearch Library Actually Is
The FamilySearch Library sits in downtown Salt Lake City, a short walk from Temple Square. It began in 1894 as a single room of records and has since grown into a five floor research facility, run by the nonprofit FamilySearch, which is affiliated with The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints.
Visiting is free. You do not need to check in, show identification, or prove any connection to the church to use the building. Staff and volunteers are on every floor, and the majority of them are there specifically to help visitors work through their own family history questions, at no charge.
That last part surprises a lot of first time visitors. This is not a museum with hushed hallways. It is a working research library, and the people staffing it expect you to ask for help.
Building Your Family Tree Before You Ever Leave Home
The single biggest mistake people make with a trip like this is treating the library as the place where their research begins. It should be the place where your research gets unstuck, not the place where it starts.
Get Your Tree in Order on FamilySearch.org
FamilySearch.org is free to use from anywhere, and the library's entire collection is built to connect with it. Before your trip, spend real time building out your family tree on the site, adding every name, date, and location you already know or can track down from relatives, old documents, or other genealogy sites you use.
This matters for a practical reason. A large share of the library's records have already been digitized and are searchable from home. If you show up without having searched FamilySearch.org first, you risk spending your limited library time finding things you could have found from your couch. Save that couch time for before the trip, and save your library time for the records that are not yet online.
Make a Research Question List, Not a Sightseeing List
Walking in with a general goal like "learn about my Irish side" will eat up your whole visit without much to show for it. Walking in with a specific, written down question, such as the maiden name of a particular great great grandmother born in County Cork around 1850, gives both you and the staff something concrete to work from.
Write down three to five of these questions before you go, ranked by how much they matter to you. List what you already know about each person, what you are missing, and any documents you already have. Bring digital or printed copies of anything relevant. Staff can help far faster when they can see what you have already found instead of starting from nothing.
Booking Help Before You Arrive
One of the most underused resources at the library is the help that does not require you to be there in person at all.
Free Online Consultations
FamilySearch offers free twenty minute online consultations with research specialists, bookable through their website before your trip. These sessions are meant for exactly this situation. You bring your brick wall question, a specialist familiar with the relevant region or record type looks at what you have, and you walk away with a research plan instead of a vague sense of where to start.
Booking one or two of these in the weeks before you fly out means you arrive at the physical library already knowing which floor, which collection, and which specific records to head for first. That alone can save you the better part of a day.
In Person Help Once You Are There
Once you are inside the building, specialists and volunteers are available on each floor for one on one help, generally without an appointment. Wait times vary depending on the day and season, so if your trip falls during a busy stretch, such as around a major genealogy conference, plan for the possibility of a short wait.
If you already know which region or record type you need help with, ask a volunteer near the entrance to point you toward the right floor and the right specialist rather than wandering until you happen to find them.
What to Expect on the Day You Arrive
Getting In and Getting Oriented
The main floor entrance is open and welcoming, with volunteers stationed near the doors to help you get oriented right away. You will not be asked to sign in or show any form of identification. Dress is casual, and nobody is going to look twice at travel clothes or a backpack.
The main floor also holds the library's Discovery experiences, a set of interactive, family friendly activities aimed at getting kids and reluctant relatives interested in family history. If you are traveling with family members who are along for the trip but not especially invested in the research itself, this is a good first stop to get everyone in the right mindset.
Finding Your Way Around the Floors
Each floor of the library is organized around different regions and types of records, and that layout has shifted over the years as the collection and the building itself have changed. Rather than memorizing a floor guide that might be out of date by the time you arrive, take a few minutes on the main floor to ask a volunteer where your specific region or record type is currently housed. The library also offers a digital tour on its website, worth a quick look before your trip so the building feels less unfamiliar on day one.
Understanding the Records You Will Find There
A large portion of what used to require a trip to Salt Lake City has been digitized over the past decade and is now searchable from home through the FamilySearch Catalog. Before you travel, search the catalog for the specific towns, counties, or record types tied to your research questions. Items with a digital camera icon next to them are already viewable online, which means you do not need to spend library time on them.
What remains onsite only includes some restricted materials, rare books, and older microfilm and microfiche that has not yet been converted to digital images. If your research depends on this kind of material, a specialist can help you locate and use it once you arrive, since the equipment and process for working with older film formats is not always intuitive on a first try.
Practical Details for Your Trip
The library is open Monday from 9 in the morning until 6 in the evening, Tuesday through Thursday from 9 in the morning until 8 at night, and Friday and Saturday from 9 in the morning until 6 in the evening. It is closed on Sundays. Hours shift around holidays, so check the library's current schedule shortly before you fly out rather than relying on hours you saw months earlier.
The library has also been going through building improvements recently, which can affect noise levels, parking, and even building access on short notice for safety reasons. Check the library's construction updates page in the days before your trip so a surprise closure does not derail your plans.
Parking near the building has changed in recent months as well. Guests can use the Conference Center parking and scan their ticket at the library's second floor Guest Services desk, and additional paid parking is available nearby if that lot fills up. If you are staying downtown, walking or public transit is often simpler than dealing with parking at all.
Making the Most of Your Time
Do not try to cover every branch of your family tree in one trip. Pick your hardest, most important brick wall and build your entire visit around breaking through it. You can always come back, and most people do.
Take real breaks. A few hours into a research session, most people stop absorbing what they are reading and start making mistakes copying down names and dates. Step outside, get food, and come back with fresh eyes rather than pushing through fatigue for the sake of not wasting time.
Talk to the volunteers even when you do not think you need to. Many of them have been doing this for years and have seen patterns in specific regions or record types that never show up in a general online guide. A five minute conversation can sometimes save you an entire afternoon of searching in the wrong place.
Keep a running note, on paper or on your phone, of every source you check, whether or not it gave you an answer. Genealogy research doubles back on itself constantly, and a record of what you already searched keeps you from repeating the same dead end six months from now.
You did not fly across the country for a building full of records. You flew across the country to stand a little closer to people who are gone.
That is really the heart of heritage tourism, and it is why a trip like this tends to stay with people long after the flight home. The names you confirm and the documents you finally get to hold are not the end of the story. They are proof that the people behind them were real, and that someone, finally, went looking for them.
If this kind of trip has you thinking about the family members who are still here to ask, it might be worth starting that conversation before it becomes a research question for someone else one day.
Memoracy was built around that idea, giving people a simple daily prompt to record their own life story in their own words, so future family members are not left standing where you are now, trying to piece together a person from records instead of hearing it directly from them.
Sign up and start your first story on Memoracy today.
