Some people eat, sleep and chew gum, I do genealogy and write...

Monday, October 7, 2013

FamilySearch's Books Unavailable?

Recently, FamilySearch.org switched to using ExLibrisRosetta to deliver its digitized books collection. For the past few days the books have become virtually impossible to view and users are left with the spinning beach ball or circle of death. The previous way the books were presented worked rapidly and without problems. I have left books spinning away for half an hour or more without any response from the system. It looks like new is not better. Anyone else having trouble downloading the digitized books or is it just me? I tried downloading them at the Mesa FamilySearch Library and after signing in also with change in the time it was taking to download books.

2 comments:

  1. Works fine - possibly faster than before - for me...

    I'm on Firefox 24 and Windows 7. I've got Firefox set up to launch Acrobat Reader (in a separate window) when it downloads a .PDF. That being so, the browser session itself does perhaps behave slightly oddly - it brings up the ExLibris window with the book title, and that window remains otherwise blank *with* the spinning wheel / egg-timer / whatever and a message at the bottom, "Waiting for dcms.lds.org..." However, while that is going on, the PDF is downloading and asking if I want to save or open, etc. I've answer that and see the downloaded file. After I've finished with the Acrobat window, the "main window" is still blank below the top lines, with the spinning wheel.

    Adrian

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  2. It's not just you. When the spinning beach ball of death stops circling, there is nothing to view. It would be faster for me to drive the 20 minutes to the Dallas Public Library, where I could locate each book in under 30 minutes a piece AND actually see them once I've located them. Technology is great WHEN it works. Too often, lately, both the technology I have to wrestle with at work and at home do not work. Then it's just a major headache. I dread the day when we are limited to viewing books electronically.

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