It’s 2025. Shouldn’t everything be online by now?
Not even close.
If you've ever felt stuck in your genealogy research, the issue might not be your skills or your ancestors—it might be the limits of the internet. Here's a quick look at why so many genealogically rich records remain stubbornly offline, and how to use that knowledge to your advantage.
1. Privacy Laws
Vital records (birth, marriage, and death certificates) are often restricted by decades-long privacy laws. Some states lock these down for up to 100 years. Institutions can’t digitize or release these without jumping through expensive legal hoops--if at all. If you're missing births, marriages, or deaths, a courthouse visit might be your only option, if the records are even available.
2. Budget Realities
Digitizing records isn’t cheap. Smaller archives, courthouses, and local libraries don't always have the resources to digitize their holdings--or even to create detailed catalogs. If the records weren't included in a major project (like FamilySearch or Ancestry initiatives), they often remain untouched.
3. Fragile or Awkward Formats
Not all records are flat sheets of paper. From tightly bound books to oversized maps and delicate ledgers, many physical formats are hard to scan-and even harder to index. These require on-site handling (and sometimes preservation first).
4. Hidden in Plain Sight
Some collections aren't digitized simply because no one's asked for them in a while. They might be buried in a local archive's storage or listed under outdated names.
And believe it or not, some records simply haven’t been cataloged in a way that makes them findable. You might only discover them through a call, an in-person chat with a staffer, or reading a footnote in a local publication.
Research Strategy
Old genealogy periodicals, especially for local genealogy groups, can be your ticket to offline gold. You may find articles about what records are held at a repository or you can read the source citations to see what pre-digital genealogists used.
Before researching from home was the easiest option, someone living in the jurisdiction where their ancestors came from found it easiest to visit the courthouse to research. Microfilm might not have even been that easy to use so they headed to the courthouse before even gathering census records.
These local researchers knew there were also people living elsewhere that needed access to these records. Getting access wasn't as easy as paying for a subscription so they'd write an article for an appropriate genealogy periodical, often one associated with the location or the surname they were primarily interested in.
Many such periodicals have been digitized or if you learn about an article of interest, this is another type of offline record you can request from a library or repository holding physical copies.
When reading old U.S. genealogy articles, you may be confused by the researcher's approach.
It was very different before online research and even more varied prior to U.S. census records being microfilmed or being publicly available.
You can read about the public availability of census records in this article from the U.S. National Archives. It doesn't even touch on the issues of doing genealogy when you had to write to the Census Bureau to have them hand abstract one family in the census or before photocopying was a way to request records from other repositories or institutions.
Your take away: offline research is still easier than what most genealogists had to do through-out history.
What This Means for You
If your research has stalled, your next clue may be waiting in a box, not a browser. If you've only been researching online, you're likely missing key context or entire records.
You don’t need to hop on a plane tomorrow. But keeping a running list of “offline-only” records relevant to your research can help you prepare for a trip—or know exactly what to request if you hire a local researcher or request records from a repository.
Even better? You'll often find that prepping for a trip (real or imagined) brings your whole research process into sharper focus. Now that's a win.
Don't know what offline-only records exist?
Start a list of types of records that might exist and/or to learn about. Ideally this is a separate list from your list of known records that are offline-only. If you know a repository has a record, you want to easily be able to get the record, by quickly consulting your list, when the opportunity arises. This is why I recommend two different lists. One for records a repository has and one that are "ideas" for records some repository somewhere might have.
Starting this source idea list is great but don't forget to do some research into if the records actually exist. You can approach this by trying to learn about the type of record or learning about relevant repositories and finding what they have.
Ready for more?
Our Digital Dashboard is the perfect way to store your offline-only list and source idea list. It'll keep everything in one place so you know where to find it. You can easily add more information, sort, and copy as needed.
If you want to learn more about learning about sources, check out chapters twelve and thirteen in Essential Skills for the Occasional Genealogist.
