{"id":5721,"date":"2018-04-10T15:13:17","date_gmt":"2018-04-10T20:13:17","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/genealogy.julietarr.com\/blog\/?p=5721"},"modified":"2018-04-10T20:26:58","modified_gmt":"2018-04-11T01:26:58","slug":"familysearch-fhl-catalog-a-change-you-need-to-know-about","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/genealogy.julietarr.com\/blog\/familysearch-fhl-catalog-a-change-you-need-to-know-about\/","title":{"rendered":"FamilySearch\/FHL Catalog: A Change You Need to Know About"},"content":{"rendered":"

Update: This problem has been fixed! See FamilySearch\/FHL Catalog: Ask & You Shall Receive?<\/a><\/p>\n

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\u2019t know when this change happened, but I\u2019m glad I caught it because it impacts the search results. At the bottom, there is now an option to select \u201cOnline\u201d or \u201cFamily History Center.\u201d <\/p>\n

\"FSC-Search\"<\/a><\/p>\n

The default is \u201cOnline,\u201d which presents a problem\u2014you won\u2019t see everything<\/em> in the Family History Library\u2019s (FHL) collection. Now, even though you can\u2019t borrow films for use at your local Family History Center (FHC) any longer, this doesn\u2019t mean that you don\u2019t want to know what\u2019s 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?<\/p>\n

Most importantly, searching the entire catalog, using the \u201cFamily History Center\u201d option with \u201cFamily History Library\u201d selected, shows you EVERYTHING, even records online! So why is the default \u201cOnline\u201d?<\/p>\n

<\/p>\n

Maybe it\u2019s just me, but I don\u2019t want to search for what\u2019s only online. I want to know every possible record available through FHL\/FamilySearch and then I\u2019ll determine where I might find it (online, local FHC, the FHL, and local FHC near a helpful friend, etc.).<\/p>\n

Here\u2019s 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 \u201cOnline\u201d is selected:<\/p>\n

\"FSC-Online\"<\/a><\/p>\n

Next is the results page for Thomastown, Kilkenny, Ireland, using the \u201cFamily History Center\u201d option with \u201cFamily History Library\u201d selected:<\/p>\n

\"FSC-FHL\"<\/a><\/p>\n

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\u2019s look at Chicago. The top image is records online, while the bottom image is all<\/em> FHL records.<\/p>\n

\"FSC-ChicagoOnline\"<\/a><\/p>\n

\"FSC-ChicagoFHL\"<\/a><\/p>\n

You can see that there are several missing categories in the \u201cOnline\u201d 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 \u201cCemeteries\u201d lists 10 resources that are online, but that\u2019s out of 22 total in the FHL collection.<\/p>\n

If you want to know everything that the FHL has, both online and offline, choose the \u201cFamily History Center\u201d option with \u201cFamily History Library\u201d selected. When you find something of interest, examine the catalog record to determine if it\u2019s online (camera icon, see my other post about this<\/a>; 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.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

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\u2019t know when this change happened, […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"om_disable_all_campaigns":false,"_monsterinsights_skip_tracking":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_active":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_note":"","_monsterinsights_sitenote_category":0,"_uf_show_specific_survey":0,"_uf_disable_surveys":false,"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":true,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","enabled":false},"version":2}},"categories":[27,25,300,29],"tags":[381],"class_list":["post-5721","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-how-to","category-genblog","category-resources-genblog","category-technology-genblog","tag-tools-tech-familysearch","cat-27-id","cat-25-id","cat-300-id","cat-29-id"],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"aioseo_notices":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p3HcLI-1uh","jetpack-related-posts":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/genealogy.julietarr.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/5721","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/genealogy.julietarr.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/genealogy.julietarr.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/genealogy.julietarr.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/genealogy.julietarr.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=5721"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"https:\/\/genealogy.julietarr.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/5721\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":5726,"href":"https:\/\/genealogy.julietarr.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/5721\/revisions\/5726"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/genealogy.julietarr.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=5721"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/genealogy.julietarr.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=5721"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/genealogy.julietarr.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=5721"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}