How to search indexes to get a full index of events rather than just the whole microfiche

PEARLYANNE

I use the path search catalogue and enter the town name and will get the page that gives the whole microfiche with all the years altogether so a lot of searching among the pages involved though sometimes I can find pages for a town with all the individual years listed which is obviously better. For example, I have a lot of work to do in this town and can only get the bulk microfiches ... https://www.familysearch.org/search/catalog/721308?availability=Family%20History%20Library

What am I doing wrong?

Thanks you

SantaNinfa

@PEARLYANNE

I spend most of my days doing Italian Genealogy, and I am familiar with the potential for confusion with the two different layouts you describe.

The answer is quite simple. By starting with the 1st URL you provided: https://www.familysearch.org/search/catalog/753352?availability=Family%20History%20Library click on the word "Here" where it says "Records of Italy, Nuoro, Nuoro, Civil Registration (Tribunale) are available online, click here."

That brings you here: https://www.familysearch.org/search/collection/1946873 Just click "BROWSE ALL 118,771 IMAGES"

That brings you to the beginning of the Waypoints by Location where you can select Nuoro or Sassari. From there you can select which of those two Provinces you're interested in. Remember that Sardegna (Sardinia) has 8 Provinces.

By way of example, selecting Sassari will then lead to 9 comuni that currently have waypoints that lead to pages such as the on you showed in your 2nd URL.

The problem you are running into is that not all of the comuni have waypoints yet.

For example, Sassari has over 60 comuni. See here: http://www.comuni-italiani.it/090/index.html BUT, all is not lost. For example, let's say you want to look in Florinas. This comune is not on the Sassari list. So, instead, search the FamilySearch catalog by PLACE. You can do that here: https://www.familysearch.org/search/catalog Quickly you will see when you start typing Florinas, it will at least lead you to the films that are currently available.

Doing research in Sardegna (Sardinia) can be frustrating because so many records are simply not available.

You may discover that there are others that have done significant work using Parish records for Sardegna.

I recommend clicking here: https://www.italianparishrecords.org/search-by-region/sardegna and seeing if perhaps there are Parish Records that may help. Some of those links will take you to many sites where others have created reliable indexes.

I hope this helps you, but please feel free to leave specific comuni information, or details about what you are seeking to see if I can help you further.

Best of luck in your research!

Stephen

Áine Ní Donnghaile

@PEARLYANNE What results are you expecting to see? That page shows 3 digitized microfilm reels that cover Registri dello stato civile di Mara (Sassari), 1866-1910. Those digitized films have not been indexed, meaning they cannot be searched by name, but they can be browsed, page by page, to find records that may help in your research.

Often, within an Italian town's records, there will be a soft index, usually at the back of a volume, with names and page or record numbers.

SantaNinfa

@PEARLYANNE Further to Aine's great reply, if you need more help, there was recently a reply to a similar question over in the Italy Research Group by @Cousin Vinny

I think you will find this really helpful: https://community.familysearch.org/en/discussion/comment/520823/#Comment_520823 as it gives a nice visual of what you can expect and how to work with the film(s).

Hope this helps

Julia Szent-Györgyi

Áine wrote: "Often, within an Italian town's records, there will be a soft index". And in fact, in this specific case, the catalog indicates that item 4 on film 7968139 is an index 1866-1905. The beginning of that item indicates that it's a decennial index of births (https://www.familysearch.org/ark:/61903/3:1:3Q9M-CSDM-NQGG-V?i=1162&cat=721308), but slightly later images are indicated to be decennial indexes of marriages (https://www.familysearch.org/ark:/61903/3:1:3Q9M-CSDM-NQZV-N?i=1184&cat=721308), and the last parts of that item are decennial indexes of deaths (https://www.familysearch.org/ark:/61903/3:1:3Q9M-CSDM-NQ7K-D?i=1202&cat=721308). These are not quite as convenient as a computer-parseable index, but they can certainly shorten the time spent paging through images of the register.

PEARLYANNE

Thank you for your responses. Aine asked what I expected to see .. I thought it might be helpful to give an example of the two different ways of viewing the films.

Eg This town I found using the process I explained earlier https://www.familysearch.org/search/catalog/753352?availability=Family%20History%20Library

However, I was given by someone else this link which sets out the same fiche but very much broken down ... https://www.familysearch.org/ark:/61903/3:1:939K-R8Q5-R?owc=M6KQ-FZ9%3A244612501%2C244796101%3Fcc%3D1946873&wc=M6KW-XNR%3A244612501%2C247487801%2C244758501&cc=1946873 This is of course so much faster to search. They unfortunately could not remember how they found it. I can change the town in the same area within Nuoro and also various towns in Sassari by shortening the path at the top but they don't cover all the towns I am searching. I wondered if there is a different way of searching to arrive at these pages?

Julia Szent-Györgyi

The second type of interface is what I call "waypointed", and it is only available for some collections.

The examples I know are all Hungarian: the civil registrations, the 1869 census, the funeral notices, and the church books for places now in Slovakia all have waypoints. These all have their little, um, quirks, though.

• The ones for the civil registrations are sometimes less complete than what's in the catalog. For example, the registers from the city of Szeged are in the catalog in two entries, one of them covering 1895 to 1912, the other 1913 to 1980. Only the earlier entry is in the waypoints, i.e., if you go through that interface, it looks like you can't access anything past 1912 in Szeged.
• The ones for the funeral notices have several errors that affect the alphabetization and apparent contents/range of the waypoints. For example, for some inexplicable reason, the three groups of images that happen to start with a surname with Á are found out of sequence under a separate letter from the groups that start with A, even though those letters are treated as equivalent by the Hungarian rules that were followed for sequencing the images. Thus, the group under Á labeled "Ács, Józsefné" actually belongs in the sequence under A after "Aáron, Lászlóné" and before "Adler, Imre".
• The waypoints for the census have several errors that cause wrong counties to be on the list. For example, none of the census records actually survive from any place in Tolna or Torontál, so those waypoints are wrong and misleading. (The places filed under them actually both belong under Komárom county.)
• The Slovakia Church Books waypoints include a separate denomination of "Evangelical Reformed" -- even though that's just another way to say "Reformed", i.e., everything listed under the first actually belongs under the second.

The church registers for places that are still in Hungary, on the other hand, do not have waypoints available. Some denominations have index collections (such as https://www.familysearch.org/search/collection/1858355), but you can only access the unindexed parts through the catalog. (Or, theoretically, via Search - Images, but that database and interface is so frustrating that I avoid it like the plague.)

Áine Ní Donnghaile

Thanks, Julia. I started to reply, but I knew that you have a better grasp of the waypointed collections. I was hoping you would come along.

Cousin Vinny

As others have noted, the "published collections" are the ones that are waypointed, for Italy they are listed here: Historical Record Collections • FamilySearch. But my understanding is that FamilySearch is not creating any new published collections at this point (although they do sometimes add images to existing collections). So you are faced with having to use the catalog and/or the Historical Images to browse the unindexed records of "unpublished" locations (and I have found on several occasions that there are records listed in the catalog that cannot be found in Images and vice-versa).

Julia Szent-Györgyi

As you can see at Cousin Vinny's link, not all published collections have waypoints. (It's a necessary but not sufficient condition.)

I get the impression that the Images section is supposed to be a replacement for waypoints. The problem is, it is so incomplete and error-ridden that it is completely unusable: you can't even tell whether the thing it's listing is a register or a tax census or what, never mind "minor" details like civil versus church register, or the denomination of any church registers. And it lists everything in one jumbled mess, with no chronology, no identification of the contents of the film, or any other actually-useful details. Oh, and the place search/match is infuriatingly literal-minded: Balassagyarmat is a different list than Balassa-Gyarmat. (The catalog has its own quirks regarding hyphens, but at least it sticks to one or the other for any specific place, so if it didn't come up one way, you try the other, and you know that you've gotten everything once you figure out the cataloged spelling.)

Áine Ní Donnghaile

And I find moving around in the Images section more difficult than doing the same in the catalog. The images section sometimes jumps 10-20-30 images forward/back without warning.