Changes in the Record Search for Historical Records on FamilySearch.org

 

The FamilySearch.org website had undergone another change. The Historical Record Collections feature has been completely redone. Yes, the screenshot above is what it looks like. Missing from this view are the options to search film/fiche and other specialized searches. You can essentially search by a name, a place, or collection title. There is a more options link that gives you the following:

which includes all the previous search fields. A search gives you a different view also. This is beginning to look like a way to make last year's model look older and out-of-date. 

You now have a preference area. 

That apparently lets you export search results to a spreadsheet (that is what those XLC, XLSX, ets. are referring to). I never thought about exporting my search results to a spreadsheet especially when I got several thousands of possible results. There is an option for translated text. I tried a search for a name in Argentina (with 363) results with both the translated text option checked and the original test option checked. The main thing I saw was that the dates changed from standard genealogy dates (5 November 1874) to a shorter format (5 Nov 1874). So are they accepting the shorter form of the dates as standard? I guess I will have to try it to see. That will make it a lot easier to import information from Ancestry.com.

Browse places on the first page gave me a new larger map. 

Browse all collections still gives your the list of Historical Record Collections with 3,098 Collections. I initially thought this was a major change but it turns out to be mostly cosmetic. The old website is still there it just has one or two new faces.