incorrect birth century in massachusetts birth records
Birth records in film/folder 4000679/2315294, which are all from the years 1909-1910, are now reporting birth dates of 2009-2010 in index searches. For example, look up Hazel DeBruyn born 2009 in Massachusetts -- it gets a hit labeled 2009, but the image is from the above film and is for 1909.
Answers
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I have no proof of this, but I believe this is the result of yet another automated process gone awry, related to what FS calls "standardizing" (but which would perhaps be more accurately referred to as "choosing an associated background database value"). I've seen it on both place and date fields: the details page (https://www.familysearch.org/ark:/61903/1:1:FX7J-VNL) has an "expand" button after the text, and clicking it results in a sometimes miles-long list of everything in the database that maybe possibly could be a match to the indexed text.
Currently, determining which one is the actually-indexed text is not possible. Sometimes, the indexed text is labeled with a parenthetical "Original", but it goes through phases: sometimes, the details page simply lies about everything. (I think we're in one of the latter phases right now.)
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Is there any hope that the incorrect centuries will be corrected?
I should mention that there is another problem involved here. The details page for Hazel DeBruyn's 1909 birth is headed as "Death - Massachusetts State Vital Records, 1841-1925", though the entire film in question is devoted to birth records. Also, the home page for the collection "Massachusetts State Vital Records, 1841-1925" explicitly states that the collection includes only emendations for the years 1841-1920 along with the original reports for 1916-1925, and the button for browsing the entire collection provides access only to those particular records. Therefore, the film in question cannot be browsed via this collection. Formerly, there was a collection called Massachusetts Births, 1841-1915, which did allow browsing the original birth reports, but the home page for that collection disappeared recently, perhaps as recently as yesterday.
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The best suggestion I can give you is to report the problem using the Feedback tab on the bottom of the search page https://www.familysearch.org/search/record/results?count=20&q.filmNumber=004000679&q.givenName=Hazel&q.surname=De%20bruyn
Click the tab, choose an emoji, then you can write a detailed explanation of what you expected and how it differs from what you found, including urls and IDs. Leave your email address so the team that works in this area of FamilySearch can get back to you if needed. Please note that the feedback tab will not work properly if you have an ad blocker turned on since it is a popup.
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