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In my last post in this series, "How do we find anything on the FamilySearch website? Digging Into the entire FamilySearch.org website, Part Nine," the title was ambiguous. I was not trying to show how to find everything on the FamilySearch.org website, I was asking a question about whether finding anything was even possible. Let me illustrate and explain the issues involved in searching for a specific record entry on the website.
My first example is rather easily understood, but not too well known. Only about 20% of the records listed in the FamilySearch.org Catalog are indexed. That means when you do a search for a name using the search engine on the website, you are only searching a relatively small percentage of the records. The figure of 20% comes from statements made by FamilySearch employees. I think the actual number is far less. But I will use that number as a starting point. The Indexed records (meaning those indexed by FamilySearch.org as listed on the Browse All Collections link on the new search page.
The list is updated regularly with newly indexed records. Also, as I wrote about recently, (See "FamilySearch using computer-assisted indexing for digitized records) this indexing may start to expand rapidly.
Now, in the FamilySearch Catalog, there are a lot of unindexed records. What this means that you have to search by location, find a record that might apply to your ancestor using dates and places, and then search page-by-page through the record to see if the ancestor shows up. But wait, there is a serious problem with the catalog. Let me illustrate this problem with the following example.
Let's suppose you were looking for a record in this FamilySearch Catalog Entry.
There is a record of parish baptisms for the Registros parroquiales, 1618-1929 of the Iglesia Católica. San Pedro (Tortes, Lugo) in Spain. The first entry is for images of Bautismos 1618-1915 (desordenado, faltan años , con mat. y def.) or Baptisms 1618-1915 with the comment that they are disorganized, lack certain years, and damaged. Let's further suppose that you were looking for a marriage record. The next entry in the Catalog is for marriages. So you would skip looking at baptisms. However, if you search through every section of records in this collection of baptisms like I did, you will find that yes, records are missing, and yes, they are disorganized but what is more important you will find a marriage record like this.
This marriage record is located in the middle of the baptism records. If you want to have an interesting time working with the Catalog, try and find this same record. I have at least shown you where the record is located which is more than I knew at the beginning of this search.
What do we learn from this example. We cannot rely exclusively on indexes and catalogs. I have written in the past about my experience of doing research for Cristóbal Colón (Christopher Columbus) in the J. Willard Marriott Library at the University of Utah. I found books about Colón in about five different places in the library. I learned years ago that finding specific information in a library took more than looking in the card catalog. I found the books by walking the shelves (looking at all the books in the library, yes all of them). I expand that insight to include all catalogs and all indexes.
Now what about FamilySearch? There is still another issue and place to look. As the records that are being collected by FamilySearch are digitized, the people doing the digitization send each week's work to FamilySearch on a hard disk or, I suppose, online in some cases. Each week's collection is processed and the place and type of records are added into the FamilySearch website in the Images collections. You can find Images as the second item on the dropdown Search menu at the top of each page. Here is what you see.
If I put Spain into this search field, today when this was written, I get 710,538 results. Further investigation of these images shows that I can go to the Diócesis de Lugo, Spain (Dioceses) where I was looking for records when I found the record above and see 6,669 results. However, in this case, the records are not further broken down by parish so technically, if I wanted to see if there were any more records from Tortes, I would have to search down through all six thousand plus of this list of records.
What is the solution to what is going on? Well, first of all, none of the other websites do much better. Some have better search engines and some have more indexed records but the only real way to be sure you are finding what you are looking for is to search through the original records page by page when that is possible. This is the real reason why it is still necessary to visit the original archives, church, repository of whatever where the records are kept when you can't find anything online. Also, do not rely on just one website make sure you know how to look directly for the records.
Yes, you still look for names with dates and places, but you do not ever think that just because a record did not magically appear in response to your name search that there are not more places to look.
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