How To Get Your Family History Printed For Free

Did you know that you can get a bound copy of your family history printed for free? It's true. A little bird (of the Waleria variety) told me that the Allen County Public Library will print submitted family histories for free in exchange for a copy for their collection. They have over 55,000 in their collection already. Since I'm hoping to publish a family history later this year and will be looking into publication options I thought this one was worth considering. I mean, how can you not like "free"?

I checked the Allen County Library web site first but couldn't find any information about such a program. So I sent an email to the librarian and quickly received a reply to the affirmative. Here's the information from my email.

If you send us a completed family history (in loose pages, notebook or disk) we will make two bound photocopies, one for our collection, and one for you to keep. The process takes about 3 months, but can go longer. Just bring your manuscript or send to:

Copy Exchange Program
Genealogy Center
Allen County Public Library
PO Box 2270
900 Library Plaza
Fort Wayne, IN 46801

Pretty neat, eh? I went back to the ACPL web site and entered "copy exchange program" into the search box and came up with a newsletter article about it from back in 2004. I guess it's a long standing program, one I'd never heard of. What about you? Were you aware of this program? Have you participated in it and if so what did the finished copies look like?

Thanks for the tip Waleria!