The Revised FamilySearch.org Help Center

 

https://www.familysearch.org/blog/en/familysearch-simplified-help-menu/

The FamilySearch.org website has evolved into a complex collection of different resources. How and why you might want to use these resources depends on your experience and interest in genealogy and family history. Once you register and begin using the website, you are confronted with a confusing list of personalized topics including a list of contributions made by your relatives if you happen to have relatives using the website. You only recourse to learning more about the content of the website is to begin looking through the various menu items. 

The website contains a number of resources. These resources include the following main areas of interest:

1. The FamilySearch Family Tree

2. Billions of digitized genealogical records available in different locations on the website as listed in the Search tab at the top of each page: Records, Images, Family Tree, Genealogies, Catalog, Books, and the Research Wiki. Some of these resources act as finding aids and do not contain actual records. For example, the Catalog, the Records (Historical Record Collections) and the Research Wiki will provide links to the actual records but do not contain the content of any of the records. 

3. The Memories section of the website that contains user contributed photos, documents, stories, and audio files. 

4. A section on volunteering for an ongoing Indexing Project that has its own website and instructions. 

5. An Activities section that seems aimed at creating interest in learning to participate in family history but with no real structured instruction about how to do the actual work of finding your ancestors and relatives. 

There are also sections of the website that are directed at ordinances done in the temples of The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints that are only visible if you are registered as a member. 

Instructions for using the website that are scattered around the website with no clear links to any central location. Most of the helpful information is found in the Research Wiki. There is no place on the website where you can see a list of all of the resources available. The usual place for this type of finding aid is in a site map. However, the site map for the website is not specific enough to find many of the existing pages on the website. Here is a screenshot of the site map.

https://www.familysearch.org/site-map

You may be surprised at some of the pages you can find through the site map that you may have never known existed. 

Now, we have a "New" Help menu. What does this Help menu help you do or find? The answer is no much especially if you have a specific question about where to find something on the website. 

Here is the dropdown help menu. 

If you want to contact FamilySearch, you can click on the link for "Contact Us" and get a long list of international telephone numbers. If you do call the one of support numbers, they will create a case number for you inquiry. Previous to the current revision, you could then check back on a list of your previous and current inquiries to see if there now answers to your questions. This option and list has entirely disappeared. 

If you click on the Help Center link, you get the following web page. 

https://www.familysearch.org/help/helpcenter/

This page requires a significant amount of further exploration. Searches will provide you with long lists of suggested topics. This has always been the case when searching for help about a particular topic. In short, the new Help Center is not an improvement in the user's ability to find help but merely a revision of the interface with new icons. Here are all the search topics

More icons does not equate to more help. 

The real issue with large websites such as FamilySearch.org is that there is no real way to link all of the resources in a centralized way. If you need examples of huge websites that are impossible to use, all you need to do is look at a few of the websites put up by the United States Federal Government, such as the USGS.gov website. 

You might want to start a help center for one of these websites with a question: What do you want to do? and then start categorizing the responses. Right now, the new Help Center on the FamiilySearch.org website is not an improvement and the loss of an list of previous inquiries is a serious step backwards. 

Understanding the status all of the records on the FamilySearch website

 

There are multiple categories of records hosted on the FamilySearch.org website and you may be surprised to find out what you have been missing. As this post is being written there are over 8.7 billion records on the FamilySearch.org website (hereinafter "the website). There are about 4.51 billion digital images published. See Company Facts. 

Here is a list of the categories with a comment about their availability. 

1. The basic collection of searchable records on the website  are contained in the Historical Record Collections. 

This collection has digitized records that are cataloged and indexed. Not all the individual record collections are completely indexed. You can view a list of the published collections by clicking on the link under the "Find a Collection" section on this web page. Some of the collections are still marked as "Browse Images" which means that none of the records in the collection are yet indexed. Even collections that show a number of records are possibly not fully indexed. You need to look at the total number of records in the collection and compare total to the number listed on the last updated list. Here is a screenshot of the list sorted by last update. 

If you click on a particular image link, you will see the catalog entry for that collection. You can tell if all of the records have been indexed by comparing the number of records in the list with the total number of records listed in the catalog entry. 

2. I have already pointed out that some of the records in the Historical Record Collections are not indexed but the number of indexed records is only a small percentage of all the records on the website. It is also important to understand that the indexing process does not always include all of the information and names on the record. A large number of records on the website appear only in the Catalog. 

The catalog does not contained a link to all of the records on the website. Many of the records on the website that are digitized but not indexed are cataloged and listed in the catalog. These records may have their own index but otherwise are only searchable page-by-page. The records are primarily organized geographically and then by category. 

If you do a name search on the website, you are only searching the indexed records; a very small set of the entire collections of records. 

3. The website contains a huge collection of digitized books that are fully searchable. Currently, there are 509,768 digital books on the website. This number continues to increase as more books are digitized. The books are searchable from the Books section of the Search menu. 

4. A significant part of the digital records on the website are use restricted in some way. For example, some of the digitized books are subject to copyright or publication limitations and cannot be viewed online. Other records may only be viewed while using a computer in a Family History Center. Here is the link to the explanation of why some of the records are restricted. See "Why are there access restrictions on Historical Records?"

5. The effort made by FamilySearch to digitize records around the world is ongoing. However, the number of digital images being created is far outstripping the effort needed to catalog and index all the records. At the beginning of this post, there is a screenshot of the Images search page of the website. There are millions of digital images that have been collected in this section that are not indexed or cataloged. You can search for these images by country. Here is a screenshot of the list for Argentina for an example. 

These records are only searchable individually, page-by-page. As new images are digitized the collection of these records increases day by day and week by week. As the records are cataloged, they move into the catalog and are then available in that way. 

I might add here at the end that there are more records in the Family History Library in Salt Lake City, Utah and the Brigham Young University Harold B. Lee Library in Provo, Utah that are not on the website at all. Persistent researchers may find a gold mine of unindexed records that are not in the catalog either. 

As genealogists, what should we do about place names?

 

For some time now, FamilySearch.org has been encouraging users to "standardize" place names. This effort has been moderately successful and is continuing to evolve. The suggested standard place names rely on a large database of worldwide names. More recently, FamilySearch has been adding a time-frame to the suggested standard entries. Here is an example of a person with entries that are marked as "Missing Standardized Birthplace" and "Missing Standardized Christening Place."

• Birth

    •    • 

  1764

  Deal, Kent, England 
• Here we have some information; a date and a place. The first question is whether or not the place exists and even if it does exist, did it exist at the time listed? A quick check online using Wikipedia shows the following entry for Deal, Kent, England. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Deal,_Kent 
• 
  
• Unlike places in the United States, there is usually not problem of the place not existing far into the past. In this case, Deal was first mentioned in the Domesday Book of 1086. The town is identified as in the District of Dover, the Shire County of Kent, in the South East Region, and of course, in England. Putting the place into the United Kingdom in 1764 is problematical. Here is a short quote from Historic-UK.com article, "The UK & Great Britain – What’s the Difference?"

So when was the UK established? Although some people argue that the UK was formed in 1707 by the Act of Union between England, Wales and Scotland, the name United Kingdom wasn’t adopted until 1801 when Ireland was brought into the union.

In this case, it would seem that England is sufficient although it would not necessarily be "wrong" to add United Kingdom to the entry. So why is this particular entry marked as not standard? 

By clicking on the edit link on the entry, FamilySearch provides a way to see a list of standardized places associated with this entry. 

Here is the standardized list. 

I realize that I copied Deal, Kent, England Parish, 1067 to 1801 twice. 

It would seem to be clear that some distinction had to be made between the parish and the town. Actually, when you go to the sources that are already listed for this entry, the place name is different. 

It turns out that looking for the parish church creates a new level of problems for determining the location of the event. Here is a screenshot from Google Maps showing the churches in Deal.

Further research indicates that there are three parish churches in Deal: "Upper Deal St Leonard is the Ancient Parish church of Deal. From this parish were formed Deal St George, Kent and Deal St Andrew, Kent." See Deal, Kent Genealogy So we have more research to do. But at this point, we can probably say that the person was baptized in the town of Deal but cannot say for certain where the baptism took place. This is important because if we are to do more research into the family, we would need to know more than just the town. In fact, without more research, we would be forced to search the records of all the churches that show up on the map above. You might also note that the three churches, St. Andrew's, St. George's, and St. Leonard's are all quite close to each other. 

Of course, you say. Look at the original record. Hmm. The problem is that the baptismal record is a transcription or extraction of the original record and the original record of over 1000 pages is taken from the Bishop's Transcripts. If this doesn't mean anything to you, you probably got lost a while ago. Let's just say that I went through the thousand page document and found the record but the website crashed when I tried to download the page containing the information. I did the search again. Here is the record. 

Here is the citation from the record.

Catalog Record

Item Number

Film/Digital Note

Archdeacon's transcripts, 1570-1731; Bishop's transcripts, 1612-1732, 1813-1831 Item 1 Bishop's transcripts: Baptisms, marriages and burials 1612-1732 (missing: 1613/4, 1614/5, 1619/20-1627/8, 1640/1-1661/2, 1665/6, 1682/3, 1692/3-1730/1)

Bishop's transcripts for Deal Item 2 Baptisms, marriages and burials, 1564-1800 (missing: 1565/6-1567/8, 1572/3-1575/6, 1579/80-1582/3, 1584/5-1587/8, 1589/90-1592/3, 1596/7-1610/1, 1613/4, 1621/2, 1627/8, 1640/1-1660/1, 1688/9, 1689/90, 1690/1, 1694/5

Guess what? The record simply references the parish church of Deal. So what do we do with the place the event occurred? 

Obviously, using a standardized place name is not awfully helpful in this situation but given the details of the record, using the standardized place of the town is probably the right choice. But this exercise clearly illustrates the fact the standardized place names are only a bandage solution to real problem. We can only be as precise as the records. But as long as we have found a source 

The last question is would it help to use the place as the "Parish Church of Deal, Kent, England?"

Are You A Genealogical Victim?

 

I got an interesting comment on one of my blog posts recently. It was posted by someone who remained anonymous. 

All these commercial geneology websites are inaccurate and an absolute waste of time. None of the family info on Heritage, Geni or Ancestry is accurate. They assume that people must be related if the surname is vaguely similar. I have found my own mother listed by some anonymous webmaster on all 3 sites as the daughter of two totally unrelated people. They all scavenge from each other. I have no intention of helping them correct the information as it is not theirs to buy or sell. I know for a fact that no member of my family provided any of the information let alone gave permission to put it up online. The material is incompetently scavenged from death notices and similar. The only interest of these companies is profit.

If you ignore the misspelled words and inaccurate quotes, you might get some insight into what is is to be a genealogy victim. As a long-time trial attorney, I became acutely aware of those people who suffered from victim syndrome or what is also known as victim mentality. There are three main beliefs of this malady. See "How to Identify and Deal with a Victim Mentality."

• Bad things happen and will keep happening.
• Other people or circumstances are to blame.
• Any efforts to create change will fail, so there’s no point in trying.

During the past pandemic year, the news has been saturated with accounts of people who have bought into various "conspiracy theories." These people are suffering from victim mentality. They feel helpless in the face of a complex society and are constantly told that the reason things are so bad is because of some evil, external, force that they cannot or will not confront. Look at the claim above, because this individual finds some inaccurate information online about his or her mother, the person jumps to the assumption that this is caused by "some anonymous webmaster" who is intentionally spreading false information about this particular person's mother to make a profit. 

My first and fundamental question is how does this anonymous webmaster make any profit from having false information about this person's mother? From a genealogical standpoint, how does this person know for certain that the information about his or her mother is inaccurate? As genealogists, we see plenty of examples of people who find out that their "parents" are not their parents through DNA testing or even just through research. 

This person further has to buy into the idea that someone owns their ancestry and that there is some method whereby they have to give someone permission to post historical information. 

Part of the comment is correct. Most of the large online genealogy websites are operated for. profit. So are almost all of the large online retailers such as Costco, Walmart, and Amazon. What is interesting is that this commentator uses victimization as an excuse to blame someone and justify taking no action to correct something viewed as wrong.  But also, the commentator takes the time to protest and claim the right to accuse others of being responsible. 

It is also interesting that despite careful and systematic research some inaccurate, online information persists. But that is mainly due to the ease in making copies from one inaccurate source to another not through any intentional desire to misrepresent historical information. 

What could this person do to correct the information? Perhaps nothing. But it might be a good idea to correct the wrong information as it is found and notify those who posted the information for the reason that the information is not accurate. 

 

Let's Think About Records Preservation

 

The value of digitizing records cannot be overstated. However, if you do enough genealogical research, you will learn that there are still a huge number of genealogically valuable records that are not yet digitized. One good example of a record repository with huge number of records that are not digitized is the United States National Archives administered by the National Archives and Records Administration. Here is a statement of the holdings of the U.S. National Archives from its own website, Archives.gov. See https://www.archives.gov/publications/general-info-leaflets/1-about-archives.html

NARA keeps only those Federal records that are judged to have continuing value—about 2 to 5 percent of those generated in any given year. By now, they add up to a formidable number, diverse in form as well as in content. There are approximately 13.28 billion pages of textual records; 10 million maps, charts, and architectural and engineering drawings; 44.4 million still photographs, digital images, filmstrips, and graphics; 40 million aerial photographs; 563,000 reels of motion picture film; 992,000 video and sound recordings; and 1,323 terabytes of electronic data. All of these materials are preserved because they are important to the workings of Government, have long-term research worth, or provide information of value to citizens.

One thing I find interesting about this statement from the U.S. National Archives (NARA is the National Archives and Records Administration) is that the number of pages is approximate. The reason for this is simple, the U.S. National Archives does not count or store their documents by pages. They store the documents by the space the require in linear inches, feet, yard or in cubic feet or by the size of the container. 

What is left unsaid is that only a small percentage (a very small percentage) of all those records have been digitized. The vast majority of the records are available to researchers only on paper, microfilm, or microfiche while physically present in one of the national archives repository locations around the country. One egregious example of what can happen because of this lack of diligence in digitizing the National Archive's records was the 1973 fire at the National Personnel Records Center in St. Louis, Missouri. Of course, this occurred before digitization was possible but the records could have been microfilmed and copies stored in a separate location from where the fire occurred. 80% of the Army records of personnel discharged from November 1, 1912 to January 1, 1960 were destroyed and 75% of the records of Air Force personnel discharges from September 25, 1947 to January 1, 1964. This likely means that my own father's military records were destroyed although I do have his own copy of the records. 

Now, with advent of digitization and the experience of losing so many military records, you would think that the U.S. National Archives would be diligently pursuing a plan to digitize all of their holdings. No such luck. As I have already mentioned, only an extremely small percentage of all that paper has been digitized. 

Now you may find a way to excuse the United States Government from digitizing all those records. After all we don't want all of us private citizens digging around in the inner workings found in the records of our own government, do we? What has happened is that the National Archives allows private organizations, both commercial and non-profit to digitize a small number of the historical records. If you want to see what is being digitized and what has been digitized and by whom the work is being done, you can see the National Archives page entitled, "Microfilm Publications and Original Records Digitized by Our Digitization Partners." On this page and its linked pages, you will see exactly how limited the project really is. You may also note that many of the projects are not started. 

The U.S. National Archives is not the only example of archives that are not making a serious effort to digitize their own records, it is merely the worst example. If you want a reality check about the online availability of documents, see if you can determine what percentage of your own state or national archive's records are online and searchable. 

Why then do genealogists think they have searched everywhere?

The BYU Family History Library is now open to everyone

 

We are glad to be back in the Brigham Young University Family History Library. The BYU Family History Library is. part of the main Harold B. Lee University Library on campus. It is open during regular library hours. Here is a link to the Library Hours page: https://lib.byu.edu/about/hours/ Because the library is part of the university, it is always a good idea to check for holidays and other times when the library may have different hours due to finals or between semesters. 

Missionary help with family history is available Monday-Thursday 10am-8pm and Friday 10am-6pm, Mountain Time. Only virtual help will be available until June 21st and then we will be providing help both virtually and in-person at the same times. It is likely that the availability for missionary help will increase as we have more missionaries to work. Currently we are not open on Sundays and the Sunday virtual classes will continue to be held. 

During the pandemic, all the missionaries have been working from home. Due to the pandemic, no new missionaries have been added and we need about 50 more missionaries to support a complete schedule. If you are interested in helping in library, please contact us through the BYU Family History Library website: https://fh.lib.byu.edu/

We will be having a welcome back party on Monday, June 21st, from 10:00 am to 4:00 pm. Activities include:

• BYU Family History Prize Wheel
• Family History Escape Room
• Runs every hour
• Discovery Center Activities*
• Famous Relatives Bingo*
• Famous People Activity*
• Historical Newspapers Display*
• RootsTech Sessions in Classroom
• Relatives Around Me Contest (12 PM)

The 2 most closely related people who don't know each other get a prize

*Come to the desk for candy if you complete this activity

An Amazing Photo Repair from MyHeritage

 

This lovely photograph of my Grandmother and my Great-uncle has always been a challenge for me. I spent hours using Adobe Photoshop "repairing" the torn part of the photo. I hesitate to show my repair because it was not at all acceptable. Now, here comes the Repair feature from MyHeritage.com. This is the repair that took all of about 15 seconds. 

Granted, you might not have such fabulous results from your own photo, but considering the time I have spent trying to do the repair on my own. This is almost unbelievable. Also, the other issues with photo were also corrected. I doubt that the original photo was as good as this repaired one. Now, this is not the end of the project. Here is the same repaired photo after MyHeritage.com applies the enhancement option. 

Next, I could add colorization. 

All this from a badly torn photo. What do you think?