Finding Information in Unindexed Microfilm

A.Capowski

I have an ancestor who was in the Austrian army. I obtained new information that makes me hope I now correctly know his regiment and have been trying to find him in the "Grundbuchblätter, 1820-1858" microfilm set. This is an unindexed record set, so the only way to find him is to page through the records one by one looking for his name. Previously, when I was looking for him in a different regiment I could page through the images with no issues. Now as I page through the images I can only do about 100 before I get an "image won't load" error and can no longer access the microfilm.

I have contacted support and they said this limit was imposed to stop malicious use of the servers. While I can understand that, it also stops the intended use of the servers. This is analogous to an email system deciding to stop spam by allowing each user to send one message per day to one individual. It will definitely stop spam, but it also renders the email system unuseable.

There are 23 reels of film for this regiment. Each reel contains between 2000 and 2500 images. If I can page through 100 at a time, and I do that once a day it will take 2 years to review all the regimental records if I am diligent and do it every day.

I am certainly open to any means Family Search has for addressing this issue. However my suggestion is that unindexed microfilm not be subject to image restrictions - or that Family search provide some mechanism for verified users to be exempted from them. Without an index there is no way to find things without paging through the data.

I don't believe this is a data licensing issue, as this restriction is new in the last year or two. I did not have this problem in the past.

Maile L

Hi @A.Capowski and welcome to FamilySearch's community. This is a know issue called throttling. There is a large discussion about this at error loading picture.. please try later. The Community Manager posted what we know here: https://community.familysearch.org/en/discussion/comment/493360#Comment_493360

I hope that helps.

Julia Szent-Györgyi

You can sometimes get around the throttle by switching between browsers. (Different browser = different session.) The length of the timeout varies: I have experienced it being as short as two minutes, and as long as two hours, but it is never as long as a full day.