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Thursday, June 27, 2013

Moving sources over from New.FamilySearch.org to Family Tree

Those of us using New.FamilySearch.org in the past got an email notice about moving our sources over  to Family Tree. Essentially, the sources got moved if we opted out of responding. Now, this presents a really interesting question; what sources were there in New.FamilySearch.org that were worth moving over to Family Tree?

If you haven't worked on New.FamilySearch.org, you probably don't realize that the program didn't exactly encourage sources. The link to sources wasn't exactly conveniently placed and if your looked at the "sources" listed, most of them referred to FamilySearch extracted record sources. Here is a screenshot showing the link to the sources:


Here is a another screenshot showing a partial list of the "sources" for this individual:

There are, at least, 200 or 300 such sources listed similar to these for this individual. Finding something relevant and useful seems almost futile. I guess I am not sure what FamilySearch means when they say they are going to "move the sources to Family Tree?" Do they mean all this stuff? What is that supposed to do to help me or anyone else? I am aware that some people were persistent and actually entered valuable sources into the system. How is anyone supposed to know what is good and what is junk? Most of the entries for my ancestors in New.FamilySearch.org have very similar lists of sources.

Here is a typical source entry:

SourceSource type: Other, Media type: Microfilm, Repository name: Family History Library, Repository address: 35 N West Temple Street, Repository city: Salt Lake City, Repository state: UT, Repository country: USA, Repository postal code: 84150, Call number: NONE, Event date: , Sheet number: 007, Reference number: NONE, Batch number: F515266, Serial number: 00028, Contributor: jlmshelley338424, Contributor of repository: FCH
I am not sure what I am supposed to do with that or why I would care. There is a reference to a Batch number, F51266. The "F" designation means that the source of the record was from a "Family Entry. Patron submitted family group records. Some dates or places are estimates." You can find a list of all the Batch number designations at IGI Batch Number Descriptions in the FamilySearch Research Wiki. This particular source was one of 73 submitted by user jlmshelley338424 and was grouped with others as sources for the first name of the ancestor. 

I am really wondering what I am going to do if all this stuff shows up in Family Tree?

2 comments:

  1. It is my understanding that only those sources that were added to new.FamilySearch by patrons are to be moved over to FamilySearch Family Tree, not those added by FamilySearch. The move has not been made yet.

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    Replies
    1. The problem is that almost all of the sources I am looking at in that long list would qualify as patron submitted. Most of them, many, many of them, have my own name on the source.

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