What should I do?
A patron looked at images from a film a few months back and saved a direct link in their research log. They had not created a full source citation at that time and went back to pull it up to determine what the collection title was. However, whether searching or browsing in the catalog by film#, location, etc., it is as if this film no longer exists. (They also tried finding it via the Wiki.) There is no longer a catalog entry for it. They reached out to support, but everything they were told to try was something already tried. They were then told to just use the information on the images they could see to create their citations. But that is not what the patron is looking for. They are looking for collection title information, but even more are concerned that anyone without the direct link to the film on the website, or who has a physical copy of the microfilm, would not be able to find it.
Although the help desk had all the pertinent information including pictures, I'm not sure if they didn't understand that this was not an operator error situation, but that the patron was looking for Collection information they believed to have disappeared from the catalog.
I did some digging myself and was not able to locate a Collection title anywhere in the Catalog or Wiki. Looking closer at the images on the film, it appears the last item on the film goes up to 1930. These are Vital Records from Rhode Island, and RI has a 100 year restriction on birth and marriage records. There had to have been a window of time where the film was accessible, otherwise the patron could not have a link to the film images. And they wouldn't have found except by searching/browsing in the catalog. So I'm guessing that due to identification of restricted records on the film, instead of just adding one of those pop-ups that notifies you that the film is restricted, the collection was just completely removed from the catalog.
Is this a new practice (removing the catalog entry instead of adding the restricted pop-up) that I missed hearing about? Or is this more likely an accidental error that that the catalog entry was removed? If an error, where/how is the appropriate place to report this? The regular help line?
Thanks
Answers
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Have you read some of the threads posted yesterday (10 Sep 2024) regarding current issues with the website? Numerous collections were unavailable yesterday; engineers were working on the problem late in the day. Some relevant threads:
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Wednesday, I was working with a couple of Service Missionaries, when access to resources threw up errors in the afternoon. One of them knew how to access the code section log and identified a possible cause (Server failure) and submitted it to nasupport@familysearch.org. By Thursday, many of those issues had apparently been resolved. I noticed wonkiness Monday and it got worse Tuesday morning. I'm delighted that I have a Service Missionary who can do deeper troubleshooting than I can. I love when FamilySearch is not being hacked or having equipment failures and things run smoothly. I imagine assigned Guardian Angels and FamilySearch techs and engineers are being kept very busy by the Adversary. They are in my prayers.
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