US, Alabama—Naturalization Records, 1875–1959
Upon reading the new PI, I found a discrepancy.
What to Look for While Reviewing - There is this statement - "Naturalization records that include only a name should still be indexed." and then under the
What to Index, I found this - "Indexes are images with only a name and reference information, such as page or volume number, with no other information, such as dates, available. Indexes should be marked as No, No Extractable Data." I am not sure what they are asking for as to either index just the name or not to index with only a name.
If your being told not to index something and then your telling the reviewer that it needs to be indexed is a little confusing, or I am just getting in my head again as I normally do in over thinking things.
I also notice that while doing review a new pop up box came up with "Some changes have been added to the What to Index section as of 7/14/2023. Please examine the updates before indexing this project. Can I make a suggestion on this. Is there a way to either change the text color of what was changed or leave the original text and then put a line through that and make the additional change below or insert the change after whatever was lined out. The only reason that I am making the suggestions is because I don't know what was changed after reading all of the PI's again. Each time that I do a review or index for a new day, I read the PIs over and I am not sure what has changed from day to day even when a pop up window is telling me that something changed.
Answers
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Great post, Faith! You are not imagining these problems with the instructions. Nat instructions and examples used to be very well explained and for some reason they have a taken a very weird turn. Enough to make me take out my 10 foot pole and back away.
I think they added:
Do not index certificates of arrival or certificates of loyalty.
I would LOVE to see an example of an indexed Certificate of Admission and A Certificate of Loyalty. ;) Never have I ever seen either document (in indexing and reviewing thousands of naturalizations records).
And yet - they still haven't fix the serious problem in the Example 1 of the combination image of declaration and petition.
Note: The petition for naturalization should be indexed in a separate entry. Do not use information from the petition for naturalization to index the declaration of intention.
AND the Conflicting Instruction: When combining information from multiple documents on the same image, use the record number from the petition for naturalization. If the image does not show a petition for naturalization, use the record number from the document with the most recent date. This is an exception to the General Indexing Guidelines and should not be applied to other projects.
IF they want every document indexed, then there needs to be an instructions saying to do so - because we never indexed a declaration and a petition for the same person, on the same image separately. The goal was always stated as getting the person to the image, and let them figure out the rest. If that has changed, then that needs to be stated.
I'm out for a while... Good luck.
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@Melissa S Himes Thank you for trying to help me understand the PI's for NAT. This is just my opinion, and that I think each document should be entered, only for the fact that each may have different information. I have not come across any of my relatives that were immigrates. I know that on my maternal side that her grandparents come from Germany, so I am waiting to see theirs so that I can see how the documents are laid out.
I can understand why people can get confused when reading the PI's, especially me who gets into their head to much trying to understand them and interpret them when instructions conflict each other. The reason that I find things confusing in the instructions is because I worked for an accredited lab (before retiring), and before anything got released, we all got to look at what was being changed and made suggestions on verbiage to avoid any conflicts or misunderstanding.
Thanks again for trying to help me understand and I'm sure that I'll have more questions at some point or another.
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I hear you, @FaithHamm! I also wrote protocols and project instructions for medical research projects (retired too). I will say that once I got it into my head that there is nothing more we can do for, or to, these folks whose names we are indexing, the more I quit trying to understand the reasoning behind the instructions. When dealing with instructions for the living, we had overthink our every word and the consequences! When I started indexing and was doing obits, I pretended that I was from another planet and knew nothing about human relationships (Brother, Sister, Sister-in-Law), geography of Earth, place names, date patterns, etc. My mission was to follow the instructions in my spaceship's data-collection manual. It helped.
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I understand your thought process @Melissa S Himes. I'm going to try to stay out of my own head and try to not over think things. I just hope that should I do something wrong that someone will advise me, so I can correct my error.
Thank you once again.
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I have that same question -- " indexes are images ( should that be indexes or images ) with only a name and reference information, such as volume number, with no other information such as dates, available, should be marked as no extractable info. " --There certainly some question about this considering most of the indexer hav a different opinion on what to index on these images. The best solution would be to include some or even one example in the instructions, as there are plenty to choose from. Right now I am reviewing a lot of that category and the indexers have different opinions on whether to index or not. I go with the majority when reviewing until further notice.
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That particular instruction refers to indexes, like those in the front or back of a book to guide the reader to the original document.
Here is a Help Article on the subject. Maybe it will help:
https://www.familysearch.org/en/help/helpcenter/article/how-do-i-index-records-with-indexes
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This is just my opinion; it would be nice if they took every image and made it an example for each project and say whether it should be indexed or made no extractable data and then fill in all the fields for that entry. I have come across images such as cert of arrival and declaration of intent, where the cert is overlaying the DOI and not by much as you can tell it is the entire image and only the blank area of the bottom is covered, and the instructions say not to index the partially covered sheet which would be the DOI and not to index the COA so the entire image is marked as no extractable data. If you looked at the next image both the COI and COA are flipped over to cover the Oath of Allegiance, so neither of DOI or COA get indexed.
I also wonder why when you make a suggestion for an idea, no one says your suggestion will be taken into consideration. You can see how many people look at the suggestions or have made additional suggestions which is great. I'm sure everyone is busy, but it would be nice to know that it was acknowledged, even if your suggestion is not used.
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That's nice and all, but when you get a project that's like the last completed New York Naturalization project with well over 40,000 batches at 2 images per batch? That's bordering on nuts. We all should know by now the main types of naturalization documents, but I've seen quirks. Some little, some big, some that made me question the universe.
If it says to only index the overlay, then that's what it says. It's above my (non) pay grade to argue with what the PI say, but it's nice to have this, since the old desktop version did not.
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@FaithHamm In order to make a suggestion in the FamilySearch Community, you need to post in the Suggest an Idea section of the program. Click on the Community Home tab and you will see this section.
Those get looked at by the people who make changes, and can be voted on by other users.
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The reason for my opinion is that I thought it may clear up some confusion on some PI's, and that is all it was, was my opinion. It wasn't an idea more of a thought.
I did make a suggestion in the "Suggest and Idea" about recent changes to PI's and got two down votes and that is fine, it was just an idea.
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We had people commenting on suggestions being passed to the appropriate teams for consideration, but some users complained about those and we stopped. They are read.
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I can't speak about the comments of other Community members, but I complained personally some months ago about the practice of a couple of inexperienced mods. Their only contributions here appeared to be in responding with a comment like, "Your issue will be referred to a specialist team for their attention".
This appeared to be a standard "copy / paste" reply from them, regardless of whether the matter was even an actual "suggestion" - sometimes it was a simple query that could be addressed there and then by a more experienced Community member.
I cannot imagine anyone here wanting to block the escalation of a matter involving a request for the implementing of an enhancement of a feature, which could only be resolved through the actions of the specialist team with responsibility for that area of the program.
Where appropriate, these requests should definitely continue to be escalated.
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