Pages

Thursday, November 15, 2012

Some Interesting Numbers from FamilySearch

The Ancestry Insider published some interesting numbers concerning the FamilySearch.org Historical Record Collections. Here are the numbers he published:


Total images published in Historical Records section: ................................................. 698.9 Million
          An image is a graphical representation (photograph) of
          an original, physical document.
Total records published in Historical Records section:................................................... 1.99 Billion
          A record is the information documented (transcribed)
          for a single life event. For example, a birth record, a
          marriage record, a death record.
Total searchable names in Historical Records section: .................................................. 3.07 Billion
          Searchable names are all (transcribed) names
          contained on a record. For example, a single birth
          record contains three names (child, father, mother).
Total collections on FamilySearch Historical Records section: .................................... 1,311 Collections

These statistics are remarkable in themselves, but in going to the FamilySearch.org website, six new collections involving millions of additional records were added on 14 November 2012 and more are likely to be added each day. So the numbers will change rapidly. 

I was particularly interested in the comments made by two commentators about the Collections. One comment said quoting exactly,
What good are these records now that Family Search sends you to Ancestry (a fee site) everytime you find a name on Family Search.
Seems to me everyone is getting shafted.
In the past you could find data on Family Search but now not so much.
What is this person looking at? It is true that there are a very few of the collections on FamilySearch.org, that at linked to images on other websites. But this is limited to very few of the collections. As the numbers above indicate there are almost 700 million images on FamilySearch.org. I do not consider this to be "not so much." I am amazed at the persistence of the belief that there is somehow a "connection" between Ancestry.com and FamilySearch.org. These are two entirely separate organizations and although they have cooperated on certain record collections, there is no ownership or other interest between the two. This attitude and rumor seems impossible to kill.

How are we "getting shafted" when FamilySearch.org offers this many records free of charge to anyone who wants to search them? Where does this attitude come from? Who are these people who can't read?



1 comment:

  1. All the censuses from 1790-1840 are linked to Ancestry.com. I suspect that since the census records are what these commenters use mainly, or even exclusively, that they were bound to encounter this problem.

    As for "In the past you could find data on Family Search but now not so much.", how is this even remotely possible? FamilySearch didn't even take down any of their collections as far as I know. In fact, they added over 1300 new collections. They still have the 1880 Census and the IGI that were popular back when the FamilySearch website was in its younger years. Those people commenting are utterly insane.

    ReplyDelete