Starting Monday, Feb. 4, FamilyLink's World Vital Records subscription database site will be outfitted with a new, gargantuan World Collection of international records.

Built through partnerships with more than 20 record-holding organizations, the World Collection has more than 1.5 billion records from about 35 countries, including England, Canada, Australia, France, Ireland, Scotland, Hungary and Portugal. It’ll double World Vital Records’ offerings.

Some of the new collection's major components:

• UK census records (1851 to 1901) from FindMyPast.com, to be posted county-by-county through out the year, including record images

• 9,000 passenger lists containing millions of names from the Immigrant Ships Transcribers Guild

• newspapers from Australia, the Bahamas, Chile, Ecuador, England, Ireland, Canada and Mexico

• 600 databases on colonial and Irish genealogy, royal ancestry, and family history from Genealogical Publishing Co. books and CDs

Other partners include Archive CD Books businesses in Canada and Australia, Irish reference publisher Eneclann, the Godfrey Memorial Library in Connecticut, UK records site British Origins and Australian book distributor Gould Genealogy.

The World Collection, which includes the US Collection records already on World Vital Records, costs $149.95 per year, but you can sign up for $99.95 until Feb.4. [Note: We've just learned of a new World Collection discount—$119.95 if you sign up by Feb. 11.]

The US Collection by itself costs $49.95 per year, or you can get two years for $79.95 if you sign up by Feb. 4.

We're going to give the World Collection a whirl and report back. If you try it, click Comment and let us know what you think.