A website that helps people investigate their family history is now available free in the county's libraries.

North Yorkshire County Council's library service has signed up to genealogy website, Ancestry.com at a cost of £6,000.

The 400 computers in the county's libraries are now connected to a database of information that library users can access for free.

County councillor Chris Metcalfe, executive member for the adult and community services directorate, said: "More and more people are becoming interested in researching their family histories and, once you start on it, it soon becomes a fascinating and absorbing pastime. There are many different resources available for researching your family history.

"Libraries have a wide range of family history resources and the County Records Office has a huge number of documents and registers and so forth. But Ancestry.com is a vast resource and it is free to library users in North Yorkshire."

Among the records stored on the website is the most complete UK census collection available online, covering the years 1841 to 1901, free birth, marriage and death indexes from 1837 to the present day, parish and probate records dating back to the 16th Century and the Scottish 1841 census.

People who already subscribe to Ancestry.com can benefit from the new arrangement, since North Yorkshire County Council's agreement with the site allows access to the Professional Edition, which has many extra features.