Update on the end of the FamilySearch.org Catalog

 

https://www.familysearch.org/search/catalog/results?count=20&placeId=1927135&query=%2Bplace%3AArgentina 

What is missing from this screenshot of the FamilySearch.org Catalog? The answer is the entire Province of Buenos Aires. I realize that I wrote about this previously in this blog post.

https://genealogysstar.blogspot.com/2024/10/the-beginning-of-end-of-familysearch.html 

But now I have more information about what is happening at FamilySearch. However, saying anything about FamilySearch usually includes a healthy dose of speculation. The FamilySearch folks are usually responsive in the FamilySearch Community but there is issue with the Catalog and the Images sections of FamilySearch go way beyond leaving a comment in the Community. 

I recently saw a Facebook post from David E. Rencher, Chief Genealogical Officer at FamilySearch, notifying the genealogy community at large about this issue, quoting from the Facebook post:

FamilySearch product managers have set up automatic creation of Full-Text Search collections based upon the primary life event of the image. Internal genealogists have advised that researchers are better served by record collections organized by record type. Product managers feel differently. https://www.facebook.com/profile.php?id=100067913932788

The issue is illustrated by this chart:

The issue of changing the entries in the old FamilySearch.org Catalog and the Image section as well as developing the Full-Text Search capabilities are the same issue: how do we find valuable genealogical information?

Catalogs, such as the FamilySearch Catalog (Old) mirror the reality of where documents might be found. The Catalog is organized geographically i.e. by the places where documents may be found in the real world. 

Well, what about using "Life Events"? One example will suffice: Coming-of-Age. Not only is the category vague and could include a huge variety of unrelated events, it is not found in any existing cataloging system. To illustrate this, do a Google search for "Arizona coming-of-age" and see the results. 

What you will see is a long list of ceremonies performed by Native Americans in the present and the past. There is no mention of records or record sources. You can get another idea from the Library of Congress Classification Outline. See https://www.loc.gov/catdir/cpso/lcco/  

You can also get some idea about cataloging systems from the WorldCat.org website. Try searching for Coming-of-Age and see the responses. Do you see any genealogically related books or records? 

My example of searches using "Coming-of-Age" is just the same as changing the jurisdictional categories in the Old FamilySearch Catalog by adding Buenos Aires City and dropping the category for Buenos Aires Province (where the records are actually found). Why are these people at FamilySearch thinking that they can somehow come up with a new system of organization for finding genealogy records when all the world's records are organized by location and topic?

There is a lot more to say on this topic but I have stacks of other pressing matters besides trying to explain to engineers at FamilySearch how to do genealogy. But, of course, I will take the time if they are willing to listen. One example is a review of the "New" FamilySearch Library Catalog. https://www.familysearch.org/en/library/our-catalogs which makes no effort at all on organization and looks a lot like the university catalogs I have been working with for the past 60 years.