Umbrella Search FamilySearch Resources for Person(s)
What are you trying to accomplish? Why?
Search multiple FamilySearch resources for person(s). To find those person(s) in all FamilySearch resources (or if I were more ambitious all historical records in the world - making FamilySearch the one stop historical person search engine...) available at once rather than through individual portals. Some may not like this option - which I assume is why the Search changed long ago (I could not locate a reference) - but I can remember when FamilySearch Search Results contained Genealogies/Community Trees at the bottom of Historical Records. What I am discussing here (couldn't find another Idea to upvote or piggyback but I am sure it's there somewhere) - is combining Search Results similarly but with the new powerful Search filters.
What is the challenge or roadblock you are encountering?
Search> Records, Search> Family Tree, Search> Genealogies, Search> Books allow searches of people - names, places and dates (somewhat) - but they require opening these separate resources/portals/categories/tabs.
What is your idea? (... well it's not new ... more like bringing back the old Search Results ... combined with the new filters)
The current Search is powerful with the filter options. Why not take advantage of this filtering capability to filter Records, Tree results, Genealogies or Books at the same time rather than separately? I think that would be pretty cool (others may not and they are welcome to that opinion). Let me explain why I think this would be good. Currently I would need to open 4 separate tabs to perform the same/similar search criteria 4 different times to get results in the 4 different resources/portals (roll eyes - I know - what a first world problem...). If my search criteria were passed to these resources once and presented me with the option for those 4 'tabs' or resource filters - I would only have to perform my search once in one browser window. Then I could access those resources through filtering or selecting that tab (whatever resource I am specifically looking for). For example, there are some common Community questions about searching Family Tree for only relations. What if the Tree results returned could be filterable by indexed relations (view relationship provides me relation so those should be filterable)/number of generations distant? The Search filters could be powerful to help these types of searches - that is what a search engine does?
How would solving this challenge improve your experience?
It would show me more categories of resources at once that I could then filter rather than performing the same search separately in each of the resources.
Comments
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It's hard to get ahead of the programmers at FamilySearch. They are really good at what they do.
I don't know if this has been released universally or if it is one of those things that are only partially out in general production. It may be a work in progress or it may be another of those features that just haven't got much publicity yet.
Check your landing page. Do you have this?
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This takes you to a page where you can use a simple or advanced search form:
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And come to a very comprehensive set of results:
Personally I have some reservations about this, mainly concerning mixing primary source documents (the indexed records), compiled research (Family Tree), and all of the junk we have been trying to get out of Family Tree (some, not all, of the databases under Genealogies). I'm concerned that people will get confused about what they are looking at and start putting as sources in Family Tree some very suspect and inaccurate information. So no upvotes on this one at this point until there is some clear delineation of what each of these sets of information really is with a clear explanation of "this is a real document" vs "this is what a researcher has concluded but it may not be right."
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@Gordon Collett understood. But personally I kind of know what I am looking for/at (...usually). Thanks for pointing out that the developers have already done it. Maybe I had a subliminal message somewhere ...
Ok, now that I have kind of given it a glance - I see that it does pass along the search to the other resources (Historical Records, Family Tree Profiles, Memories, Last Name Information, Genealogies, Catalog and Books)!
I would prefer the results be separated in the same list or be filterable ... but maybe in the future...
Hey it kinda really does look like old Search - should make a bunch of people happy for Christmas!🎆
Thanks FamilySearch!
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