Enhance source records imported from Ancestry.com

Bruce Compton

When a contributor imports a source from Ancestry using a personal account, only the Source Title and URL are reliably added. For those of us who do not have a personal Ancestry account, such a source cannot be evaluated. It is incumbent upon the contributor to supply the citation and notes, but this is not happening.

Also, the URL that Ancestry exports cannot be easily converted to an ancestrylibrary.com or ancestryinstitution.com URL. When visiting an FHC or the public library, finding the source is not as simple as it should be.

I would like to make two suggestions for product enhancement:

(1) Negotiate with Ancestry.com to export their citation and description fields with the source data and map them into the Citation and Notes fields in FamilyTree;

(2) If Ancestry can supply the URL to the source that is searchable at the FHC, please get it and map it into the Citation field or a place deemed more appropriate.

Áine Ní Donnghaile

@Bruce Compton I try to use the Ancestry share option when I attach an Ancestry record to my work on the FSFT. An example - on my 2nd GGM, L8PR-LMP. I just added the Mortality Schedule from Ancestry to her PID on FamilySearch. I used the Share link.

Does that work well for you?

dontiknowyou

@Bruce Compton

Most Ancestry sources brought in this way are duplicates of historical records available in FamilySearch. So they're just clutter. Better would be if FamilySearch could identify these duplicates and suggest the contributor substitute the record that is not behind a paywall.

Áine Ní Donnghaile

I specifically used an example of a record that is not, AFAIK, on FamilySearch. I do my best not to create clutter.

Bruce Compton

I am not a member and do not have an Ancestry account. I cannot 'share' a source. Looking at L8PR-LMP, that's an improvement over what I see. Is there a different way to import sources that that results in empty sources? Look at LJGB-F3T and see that Ancestry records created as recently as April 2022 have neither a citation nor a description.

I typically delete sources brought over from Ancestry if the same source is linked from within the FamilySearch system. How do I know if the Ancestry source duplicates a FamilySearch source if there is no citation or description? How could the software be coded to identify duplicates if there are no match points? We don't have any workable options until the source records taken from Ancestry are enhanced.

Áine Ní Donnghaile

I wasn't suggesting you could make the share link. I understood you did not have an account. I was asking if that method worked better for you to access the record I had attached.

And - my thought process - it might be a simpler programming task to convert a standard Ancestry URL to a share link.

I can also make the URL an AncestryLibrary or AncestryInstitution link if that works better. That's very easy to do.

I frequently see "sources" that are simply "Ancestry Trees" - with no link to the trees or any of the sources those trees may have. I also delete those as clutter that does not enhance the information on the PID.

Picking the first April Ancestry source I see on LJGB-F3T, this would be the share link: https://www.ancestry.com/sharing/30126573?h=025a21 for the Virginia Genealogical Society Quarterly.

And this would be the AncestryInstitution access URL: https://www.ancestryinstitution.com/discoveryui-content/view/525370619:6131

You can also convert the URL in that source to access it on AncestryInstitution - simply insert the word institution between Ancestry and .com, with no spaces.

Bruce Compton

Thanks! I was able to guess the ancestryinstitution URL sometimes, but other times not. I'll give your method a whirl.

There are several junk sources attached to LJGB-F3T. When I delete them, the user will likely restore them, including the useless "Ancestry Trees."

I manually created this source record from Ancestry for KLY3-5KP. This is what I would like to see when a source is 'shared':

dontiknowyou

I manually created this source record from Ancestry for KLY3-5KP.

But why go to so much trouble? You previously attached the FamilySearch version of the same record:

The Ancestry record is the one with the globe icon. The FamilySearch record has the little tree icon.

Bruce Compton

You are correct. I created source records for over 1000 Virginia death certificates from Ancestry before FamilySearch acquired and loaded the same dataset. The redundancy probably needs to be eliminated.

Julie Melville Hite

I have used RecordSeek (app) to add an Ancestry source (or other website) to FS. The URL comes through very well, as well as the citation. I do with the "record" datra and the year field would also transfer. But I'm grateful for RecordSeek.

Áine Ní Donnghaile

I also use RecordSeek to add source records that are not on FamilySearch, but I edit the URL to use the Share link, to make it easier for others to evaluate the source.

Bruce Compton

Getting back to the focus of this enhancement request, I want the software to do the work rather than rely on the user to manually flesh out the source record that was imported from Ancestry. The process should require no special knowledge and no taxing of one's brain. It should just work.

dontiknowyou

 I want the software to do the work rather than rely on the user to manually flesh out the source record that was imported from Ancestry.

I would want that too, limiting the ability of users to alter a transcript of a document behind a paywall.

That said, I am against enhancing any links to Ancestry that (a) hit the paywall or (b) duplicate records in FamilySearch.