locating source images
Frequently System-generated record sources provide indexed information without identifying the image where the raw event record may be found. It's essential that researchers be able to view that raw record to glean other critical information and check for indexing errors. But when the user goes to the trouble to locate the relevant image (i.e. within the sequence of hundreds or thousands of images) the "attach record" function creates a new source that does not link to the original indexed data. I recommend an option to update the original source with a link to the specific image.
Secondly, legibility and handwriting challenges often make it difficult to locate the raw event even when the correct image is displayed. It would be helpful to other users if one could "highlight" the relevant section of the image and update the source accordingly.
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Both of these suggestions are very thoughtful and if implemented, would be very helpful. I have always wondered why, when a collection of images have been indexed, the index was not linked to the images. Worse yet, sometimes the entire collection has only 1 URL, so you cannot link the individual image at all. The best you can do is expand your description to indicate the image number, and if applicable, the page number seen on the image. Why would not individual images have unique urls? I am seeing that less and less, thankfully.
If your second idea implemented, this, too, would be great. While you don't specifically say this, it would be even nicer if the highlight should actually be a link to the comments such as "Robert's death date is given here as Dec 1834." That might have a secondary purpose to helping people learn to read that old handwriting. Comments should be editable. Just yesterday in a genealogy Facebook group a woman wanted help reading an old marriage record, likely from the 1700s. She included in her post "I can read the name of the bride, Sarah Hall Sprinster,..." and of course it was easily read as Sarah Hall, Spinster by someone with a little more experience. A follow on comment to such an entry would be "Sprinster is not a name, if you look carefully, it says Spinster. This is an indication that Sarah has not been married before."
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@Gail Swihart Watson stated "I have always wondered why, when a collection of images have been indexed, the index was not linked to the images"
As genealogists, it is just as important to be familiar with the history of the records we use as to be familiar with the history of our families. One of the reasons indexes were not linked to images is because the indexes are so old. They were created when there were no digital images, no such thing as linking, and no internet.
I remembering being at church one evening and in the room used as the genealogy library there were huge stacks of paper and a primitive computer. People would come in, get part of a stack, and type information off these paper copies of frames of a microfilm into the computer.
One example of one of these older collections is "Norway Baptisms 1634-1927" whose records look like this:
The image is unavailable because when this index was created, there were no digital images. But the microfilm number is there and can be used to find the digital copy of the microfilm so one can find the original image.
It looks like there are efforts to make this a bit easier because I have seen on some of these older collections a link and a notice something like "this record may not be on this image, you may have to search in adjacent images to find it"
The only way to put a direct link from this type of collection to the actual image would be to re-index the entire collection. This time from the digital image rather than paper or the microfilm itself. Making this part of the new index editor somehow, which is basically what @marchant is suggesting, would be a useful tool. The first problem with that, of course, is how to open one of these sources in an image editor without an image.
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The reason for the lack of linkage between index entry and image is usually history: the index was created based on the microfilm, decades ago, when nothing had URLs yet. There have been various processes applied since then, with varying success in associating the correct image from the correct film with the correct index entry, but sometimes, the index simply didn't capture the necessary detail (or things got renumbered in the interim).
If you have an index entry that's not associated with a specific image (or is associated with the wrong specific image), but you've tracked down the correct image, you can paste its URL into the Notes/Description field of the index-based source that you attach to a profile. Or, conversely, you can use the Attach button on the image and include the index detail page's URL in the Notes field of that source.
As a workaround for highlighting, you could play around with screenshots and Memory sources, again with the reference URLs in the Notes field. (Or in the Where/Citation field, if you're not using one of FS's tools that don't allow editing of that field.) That's basically what I've ended up doing for the church registers that the archive in Vojvodina (Serbia) has put online; they don't offer downloads or working image-specific URLs, so I've had to upload screenshots and use the place-and-denomination-specific URL as my "citation".
In this particular case, the writing is clear enough (to me) that I didn't feel it necessary to highlight anything, nor to include more of the page, but I could have. (I think I know how to do highlights in Paint.net....)
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Ah, got it! Thanks everybody!
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