Talk:England Marriages - FamilySearch Historical Records

Index Only?

My own experience working with legacy-collections is that they are index-only. However a new user to FamilySearch asked a question on the Communities forum, about why they were being told to visit a FSC or Affiliate Library to view an image from this collection. Some discussion and debate with an experienced FS user ensured, as there were differences in understanding about many aspects of legacy collections.

My question is simply, is this an index-only collection? According to the list of historical record collections, it is: https://www.familysearch.org/search/collection/list/?cqs=England

If Yes, the "Image Visibility" template should be removed, and this page should clarify that the collection is index-only. This will avoid confusion, especially for new users.

Also, the department that deals with the Search part of the website should ensure that users are not told to visit a FSC or Affiliate Library to view a image that does not exist.

However, as I have been repeatedly told that it is not appropriate for me (a non-FHL employee) to be editing content about restrictions on access to records, can a senior editor or FS Library employee please make this edit.

--Av85647 (talk) 04:48, 19 September 2020 (MDT)

UPDATE: A fellow FS user tells me that there are images associated with records in this collection, and that he has viewed them at a FSC.

https://community.familysearch.org/s/question/0D74V000008D326/detail?language=en_US&s1oid=00D30000001b00H&t=1600653875015&s1nid=0DB30000000TNLA&emkind=chatterCommentNotification&s1uid=0053A00000DeBzi&emtm=1600653487660&fromEmail=1&s1ext=0

I'm really confused now. The lists of historical record collections say that legacy collections have no images. I've seen collections on Ancestry.com that are copies of these legacy collections and they are all index-only as well.

--Av85647 (talk) 20:13, 20 September 2020 (MDT)

Response
I believe you will recall a previous discussion we have had regarding the problems keeping image visibility notices current on collections. We have nearly 3 thousand published collections, and hundreds of thousands of film and digital folders all with varying access requirements. Realizing this, FamilySearch management agreed to have a generic image visibility notice placed on all wiki articles associated with Historical Records collections. The notice clearly states some collections "do not contain any images." As we have been instructed by our management to put the notice on all pages, we are not going to remove it.

To your second point, there has been a project ongoing for several years to attempt to determine the possibility of linking images to indexed material in legacy collections. There has been some success with that, and you will find collections linked either to an exact image, or to the first image in a folder. This project is not complete, nor has there been any decision made regarding its continuation. Also, some legacy collections have had records added to them during this year. These consisted entirely of data that was extracted possibly as recent as ten years ago, and was determined to be complete enough it could be published. Additional projects to complete indexing of these collections are not being created. SvareJM (talk) 17:49, 21 September 2020 (MDT)