Family Search Images...
Does anyone know if all or only some images have been indexed? Is there a way to know which ones have been indexed? Thank you!
Best Answers
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Not all images have been indexed. This is an ongoing project.
If you look for a location in the library catalogue, if the film has been indexed (wholly or partially), it will have a magnifying glass icon against it. Clicking on the icon allows you to search the transcriptions of that record set.
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To answer @Renee Bowman's question, "Is there a way to know which ones have been indexed?": the only way I know of is to look at each image individually. If there's index entries on the Image Index tab at the bottom, and/or the "Attach to Family Tree" button at the top is grayed out, then there are index entries associated with that image. If the button is blue, and/or the tab at the bottom says "no indexes are available", then there are no index entries associated with that page.
Note that the Attach button changes state even in thumbnail view, so it can be a slightly quicker way to check for indexed/unindexed status.
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The whole point of the Images section of FamilySearch was that these images were not YET indexed
but FS wanted to give people access the images in their unindexed state.
its an ongoing project. I have no idea what percent have been indexed so far. BUT I would expect it rather low.
Also I assume it is an ever growing collection of images - - so actually the percent may be DECREASING over time simply because the collection is growing faster than the indexing is happening.
there must be a GAZILLION images -- and it must be increasing at a pretty fast rate.
BUT I am not a FS employee - so take my words with a grain of salt.
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Here is one way to check for indexed vs unindexed.
If you go to the Search Records page and use search by place to put in a country, you will come to the research page for that country. There is a short list of indexed collections for that country under which is a link with the name "See All ....(country name).... Collections." Click there and you get a list like this one for Germany ( https://www.familysearch.org/search/collection/list?ec=region%3AGermany%2CplaceId%3A1927074%2Cregion%3AContinental+Europe&fcs=placeId%3A1927074&count=100 )
(this is about half the list). If there is a number, the collection is at least partially indexed. If it just says Browse Images, nothing is indexed.
Here is the full list for China:
The first collection listed has 72,747 images. The second has 13,247,185 images. None of these are indexed. The third has 311 images. I would have to wonder if the 455 indexed records really is a complete index or not.
In any event, this couple of examples gives just a little indication of how few of the available images are actually indexed.
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If you go to this page: https://www.familysearch.org/records/images/ they have a counter showing the number of images which is constantly increasing, currently it's growing by about 500 images per second.
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Answers
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Does anyone have any recent figures on what percentage of images have been indexed? 10%? 30%?
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Thank you everyone for your wonderful knowledge and advise to my question. It's been answered. Y'all rock!
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what does 'indexing' an image mean?
what are the images? photos???? other???
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Images: digital scans of original records or digital images of microfilm photos of those original records.
Indexing: the process of creating an index, that is, a partial transcription of the information contained in an image. The term is also used to refer to the volunteer program which does the indexing.
For example:
Images are not searchable. You have to page through them looking at each page, just like you would have to look for information in a book.
Indexing creates a searchable database of the information in an image. Usually just the most important part of an image is indexed such as names, place names, and dates. If you are not familiar with indexing, you can learn all about it by clicking on the Get Involved tab at the top of all FamilySearch pages and choosing Indexing in the drop down menu.
FamilySearch has billions of digital images online for viewing. Only a small fraction of these have searchable indexes.
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Thank you @Gordon Collett .
so the "Images" would not include photos, correct? I mean photos of people, such as CDVs.
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There is a huge variety of records and I can't tell you if none of them include photos of the type you are referring to. The database of passport applications has photos attached to some of the applications.
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see this video
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for CDV's you would generally find them in the MEMORIES section of FamilySearch
but only if another user uploaded them
this link is a start
but that link only works if someone put the word "CDV" in the description.
BUT if you are looking for a CDV of a specific person - chances are if it is in memories - it would have ALREADY been linked to the person in question as part of the Family Tree
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I have come across an instance where the microfilm consisted of several different items, from different countries.
Some of the items had been indexed, or partially indexed, but the Catalog showed ALL items had been indexed. My item of interest had definitely not been indexed, yet the catalog entry indicated it had been, which I felt was misleading.
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@MaureenE123, like everything to do with films or image groups in the catalog, the icons are assigned at the whole-film level. If there are index entries associated with some of the images, then the film gets the magnifying glass everywhere that it appears in the catalog. This does not mean that the whole film has been indexed. (Similarly, if there is a camera icon and you click it, it will take you to the beginning of the film, regardless of which item it was next to when you clicked it. The link that the icon takes you to is for the whole film.)
Also, since the catalog has been locked to updates for over a year now, there are now index entries associated with all sorts of films that do not have the magnifying glass icon.
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Several years ago I reported the problem of FamilySearch users being misled into thinking a (Historical Records) collection had been fully-indexed, when a large part remained as "image only".
I have just been checking the page at
https://www.familysearch.org/search/location/united-kingdom-and-ireland/england and see there has now been an improvement.
We cannot filter on "Indexed Historical Records" any longer and, when I opened one of the "indexed" collections (after clicking on "See all England Collections") it clearly showed, "Only a small part of the records in this collection are included in the index." (See https://www.familysearch.org/search/collection/1416598).
If this applies to the contents information for all collections I believe we can at least get a good idea now about the likelihood of our finding our relatives in a search (of indexed records).
When searching through a filmed collection, once we get to an image (as Julia points out), we can see if a name (more often the whole page of names) has been indexed, or not - from whether the name(s) appear(s) at the bottom of the page.
However, the situation is still not straightforward. There might not be an indexed record directly relating to this "image only" collection, but the details of your relative (baptism, marriage, etc.) might have been indexed under another FamilySearch project.
Similarly, because an indexed record contains the message "No image available" this does not mean it is not available on FamilySearch at all. It might be available in an "image only" collection. Indexing it from there in the future would then lead to two indexed records for the same event - nothing unusual in FamilySearch (or other websites), which often have multiple records for the same event.
Getting back to the original question of "Is there a way to know which ones have been indexed? " my answer would be that you have to test this by completing the event details at https://www.familysearch.org/search/. Even still, unless your search criteria exactly matches that of the indexed records, the search algorithm might still fail to identify it! (E.g., the place name in the indexed record might have been completely changed from the original / correct place by FamilySearch's flawed "auto-standardization" process).
In short, no - there is no easy way to discover if the record / event, relating to a person found in an image, appears in the indexed records of FamilySearch.
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