Mormons set to put part of vast collection online.

Much to the delight of genealogists, the Mormons are preparing to make some of their vast holdings of family records available on the World Wide Web for the first time next month. THE NEW WEB SITE (www.familysearch.org) won_t officially launch until mid-April, but it is expected to "go live" for testing any day now. Genealogy is one of the most popular subjects on the Internet. As more information goes online, it seems to create more genealogists. About 100 million Americans have at least dabbled in it, and 19 million actively research their family history, according to a 1995 Maritz Marketing Research study for American Demographics magazine. Rootsweb (www.rootsweb.org) has more than 200,000 subscribers to 3,000 e-mail lists about genealogy. Mormon Church officials are vague about what Web surfers can expect to find on their new site, but that hasn_t dampened genealogists_ enthusiasm. The newsletter Pioneers Online (www.eskimo.com/~mnarends helps genealogists use the Internet. With 2.1 million rolls of microfilm, 700,000 microfiches and 280,000 books, the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints (www.lds.org) is the ultimate source for many genealogists. One of the first FamilySearch databases expected to be offered on line is Ancestral File. The simple database lets surfers type in names and find family trees compiled by other researchers, mostly amateurs. The International Genealogical Index, also part of FamilySearch, lets researchers search millions of marriage, death and birth records taken from records in the United States and abroad. The church won_t say if the index will be offered on the Web site. Even with thousands of church volunteers typing the information from original records into computers, "We can digitize only a tiny fraction of what we capture each year," said David Rencher, manager of public outreach for the Family History Department of the Mormon Church. Still, the output is impressive. Over the past year, the church not only updated FamilySearch, but also released five sets of CD-ROMs reaching back 450 years and ranging from Australian Vital Records to the 1851 British Census. In 1999, it will release the full 1880 U.S. Census and the 1881 British Census, both on CD-ROM.