Update: This problem has been fixed! See FamilySearch/FHL Catalog: Ask & You Shall Receive?

Searching the FamilySearch/FHL catalog earlier, I made an interesting discovery, and not a pleasant one, mainly because I thought I was losing my mind! I don’t know when this change happened, but I’m glad I caught it because it impacts the search results. At the bottom, there is now an option to select “Online” or “Family History Center.”

FSC-Search

The default is “Online,” which presents a problem—you won’t see everything in the Family History Library’s (FHL) collection. Now, even though you can’t borrow films for use at your local Family History Center (FHC) any longer, this doesn’t mean that you don’t want to know what’s available offline, right? There are other ways to obtain offline records, such as a visit to the FHL or hiring an FHL-area researcher. Some records are also available at an FHC (you can find out which ones within the catalog entry). In other words, there are options for getting offline FHL records, so we still want to know about them, right?

Most importantly, searching the entire catalog, using the “Family History Center” option with “Family History Library” selected, shows you EVERYTHING, even records online! So why is the default “Online”?

Maybe it’s just me, but I don’t want to search for what’s only online. I want to know every possible record available through FHL/FamilySearch and then I’ll determine where I might find it (online, local FHC, the FHL, and local FHC near a helpful friend, etc.).

Here’s an example of the difference between the search results for one location (other locations with lots of records are more drastic!). First is the results page for Thomastown, Kilkenny, Ireland, where the default “Online” is selected:

FSC-Online

Next is the results page for Thomastown, Kilkenny, Ireland, using the “Family History Center” option with “Family History Library” selected:

FSC-FHL

There are two additional categories! Now this is just a simple example. But imagine a location with a ton of records. There may be one or more categories missing from the online results, or there may be one or more resources within a category missing. Let’s look at Chicago. The top image is records online, while the bottom image is all FHL records.

FSC-ChicagoOnline

FSC-ChicagoFHL

You can see that there are several missing categories in the “Online” results. You also may notice that there are resources within categories missing; even without them dropped down, they are indicated by the number in parenthesis. For example, the category “Cemeteries” lists 10 resources that are online, but that’s out of 22 total in the FHL collection.

If you want to know everything that the FHL has, both online and offline, choose the “Family History Center” option with “Family History Library” selected. When you find something of interest, examine the catalog record to determine if it’s online (camera icon, see my other post about this; or reference near the top of the catalog record with a link directing you to a digitized book or collection) or at an FHC near you; if not, add it to your FHL trip list or hire a local researcher. And, to anyone from FamilySearch who might be reading this, please change the default so that the entire catalog is searched.