Attached resources
Answers
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If they're true duplicate sources, with identical URLs, then yes, you should remove them. Otherwise, you should leave them be, because that's how the system works best. (A source that's already attached to the correct profile is harder to attach to a wrong one.)
There are multiple ways in which the same vital event ends up with multiple sources. It may have been recorded more than once, for example in the parish register and in the bishop's copy, or in both the bride's and groom's home parishes. Any (or all!) of those records may have been filmed or digitized more than once, either for the entire register, or just for the occasional page. And finally, each of those images may have been indexed more than once. Better that than being missed in the indexing!
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I share your frustration at there being so many duplicate records / sources in FamilySearch - well, "duplicate" in every sense, apart from having a different URL. During the last couple of years the issue has been particularly noticeable (for me) with items relating to the same source(s) within the English counties of Yorkshire and Northumberland. True, part of the duplication is due to both the original parish register and the Bishop's Transcripts documents being indexed. However, there appears to have been some poor log-keeping, inasmuch as multiple copies of the same entries have been allowed to appear on FamilySearch around the same time. This could be due to multiple indexing projects (of the exact same material) or perhaps material from the same projects being added to the database twice, or even three times. Either way, I believe it reflects an oversight somewhere in the indexing / post-indexing processes that has allowed for multiple publication of this exact same material.
Here is an example. Again, true it could partly represent indexing of the PRs and BTs, but six sources available to attach for the same marriage record? No, something has gone wrong here and hopefully FamilySearch will take more care (if it becomes aware of such examples) in seeing that - whatever the reason for the duplication - it can be avoided in future. After all, it is wasting FamilySearch's valuable resources in duplicating its processes, as well as causing us extra time in adding all these sources and causing unnecessary clutter to the Sources sections of the profiles with which we are working.
There is already one source for this marriage attached to the couple's profiles, but here six more are being offered:
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One way to look at this is to consider the Sources page to not be just the minimum documentation needed to support the data on the profile's Detail page, but to actually be a complete index or table of contents for FamilySearch's vast collection of indexes. When the day comes that every single entry in every index is attached to a profile in Family Tree, then no one will ever have to try all the various tricks to get a search in the historical records to work. All one will have to do is look up the person in Family Tree and have all the historical records right there.
There have been some efforts to reduce duplicated indexes but it seems someone always complains when FamilySearch tries this because the two versions of the index will have been indexed in a slightly different way and each will have information the other does not have.
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To avoid any misunderstanding, I am not suggesting any existing duplicate FamilySearch records should be withdrawn - for the very reason you highlight, whereby retiring a "duplicate" record has often meant taking away the one that contained different, or more, information.
My analysis of the citations in many of these "exact" duplicates leads me to believe an error has occurred in the "post indexing" phase - i.e., between a batch being indexed and its contents being added to the FS database. I really believe it to be likely that someone in the relevant team (or more likely a colleague) has clicked on a "button" twice, thus causing two identical sets of records from the same batch to end up in the Historical Records Collection.
Others might have their own theories, and I may be way off the mark, but from my experience this issue is affecting the records relating to a limited number of English counties and the cause could probably be identified relatively easily by an internal FamilySearch investigation.
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@Paul W, interesting theory, but I don't think the details support it. I checked the "Document Information" on those various entries for the 1788 Wrightson-Wilkinson marriage, and only two of them possibly refer to the same image.
Digital folder number 004628915, Indexing Batch M00429-5
Digital folder number 004628915, Image Number 290
Digital folder number 004628920, Image Number 847
Digital folder number 004629415, Indexing Batch I03079-5
Digital folder number 103063885, Image Number 561
Digital folder number 103063924, Image Number 255
Digital folder number 103063957, Image Number 205(The convolutions involved in getting the Community software NOT to turn that into a table were … convoluted.)
Those first two are likely two different indexings of the same image, one of them much older than the other. The rest are different image groups/films.
Based on the Catalog, it looks like FamilySearch (or the Genealogical Society of Utah) have acquired images from Newcastle-upon-Tyne at least three times: first in 1959, when they microfilmed the registers of banns; then in 1986, when they microfilmed everything, with a return trip in 2000; and then finally in 2016, when they imaged everything digitally (without reference to the microfilms). Both the microfilms and the straight-to-digital images have overlapping coverage (such as marriages 1751-1791 on DFN 4628915 and marriages 1754-July 1797 on DFN 4628920), so there will be repeats there without anybody doing anything wrong in indexing. (Without access to the images, I do not know why there are overlaps, but my guess is that some of the films or image groups contain transcripts or indexes of the others.)
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Well, I'm glad I added that phrase, "… I may be way off the mark…"! Thank you for taking time to analyse what appears to have occurred with the Northumberland records, especially with the Newcastle upon Tyne Library connections. In which case, I am willing to accept something similar has happened with regards to the Yorkshire records I have encountered, which also have multiple records for the same event within the database.
I admit I have perhaps allowed my exasperation with having to attach all these as sources to the relevant profiles lead me to theories that perhaps the evidence does not really support. (Even worse is the situation that has arisen where another FT user has attached them all to the wrong profile and I have had to remove and relocate them all to the "correct" profile!)
Obviously, I still wish there was a way for FamilySearch to evaluate newly acquired sets of records, to ensure that they do not comprise of exact copies of material it already has in its database, and thus avoid this problem. Although, I must admit I have seen similar instances on Find My Past, where (generally a maximum of two) records can be found in the index that, when examined, have identical source citations. Proving the issue is not unique to FamilySearch and the difficulty of site administrators being able to pick up on "exact duplication" before adding such records to their vast database(s).
My moans are largely connected with my having to maintain Sources sections that contain, say, around 40 items (including multiple ones for the same event), so I just don't know how other users cope in maintaining profiles that have over a hundred items attached. It's particularly become a nightmare for me since someone decided the name of the "prime person" should no longer appear in the titles - the only "remedy" for me would be to edit the titles of countless thousands of "sources", in order to know to what / whom the event primarily relates!
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Whilst I generally accept the comments you make above, it is the maintenance of the Sources sections that has now become a serious issue for me. Not only do I have multiple records for the same event I have to group together (I list by type, rather than strictly chronologically), but - as raised in my response to Julia - unfortunately, someone at FS "reprogrammed" the items causing the name of the main subject to disappear from the title, I often have no idea of the content of many of the items that have been attached (especially by users other than my self). For example, the three records I have attached to the profile of Joseph Wrightson all relate to the same (baptism of Jane) event, but how can I easily identify that in the case of the third item? Multiple sources and this relatively new issue (of omitting Jane's name, in this case) has meant maintaining the many thousands Sources sections (of profiles in which I have an interest) is taking up far too much of the time I am able to allocate to Family Tree activity.
See https://www.familysearch.org/tree/person/sources/M32G-9XH As can be seen, none of these items have been added to his Sources section by me. Ironically, without some of the multiple sources (for same event), I would have to open-up many of the items just to ascertain the subject of the record!
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@Paul W Oh, I agree completely that the Sources page is now a mess because of the proliferation of sources. About a year ago I gave up on any type of custom organization of the sources and just switched to the chronological sort provided. I've found that the tagging system is a much more efficient way to group the sources. For example, I used to try to keep census sources grouped together on the sources page. Just having each census on the profile as Residence Events and tagging the census source to the event is a far more efficient way to look at the source again than digging through the Sources page to find the census source.
I've also given up on policing sources that others have attached as long as no incorrect information was put on a profile because of one. Then I remove that information, track down the source it came from (which can take a long time due to the title problem), and detach the source.
I've been running back through seven generations of ancestors and their children from me and from my wife to check nothing adverse has happened to their profiles over the past two years and a few times the Data Quality Routine has pointed out a wrongly attached source because the source had created a data conflict. That was pretty handy.
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