SEARCH by INDEXED or UPLOAD DATE in a particular Collection. REQUEST for SEARCH FEATURE.

LegacyUser

Lesley Morris said: Could you please provide a means to search just the most recently uploaded or indexed records in a collection? ...Or search by the date(s) items were indexed or uploaded?
To have to sift through the same documents multiple times is very redundant and takes away time from finding new items that can help build or enrich the details of family trees.
Thank you in advance for your consideration and for this amazing service you're providing free of charge.

LegacyUser

Tom Huber said: Searches are always performed against the index, not the collection itself. A collection may have existed for a long time as an unindexed, but browse-able collection.

The point you make is important. When a set of records are partially indexed and that index is published, it would be nice to be able to search just the newly indexed records. Unfortunately, a given index may be updated a number of times and as such, you would need to know what part was available for searching and the dates when the index was created and/or updated.

LegacyUser

Lesley Morris said: Thanks for your reply and clarification Tom.

How about tagging records by their indexed date. If a person keeps a record of the date they last searched that particular collection, they could narrow their search based on records that were indexed after that date. The index dates could be on the side bar in the same manner other options are to narrow searches.

I hope that makes sense. It just seems there must be a simple way to reduce all the redundant viewing of records.

Thoughts?

LegacyUser

Paul said: Unfortunately, you will probably not have your request addressed. FamilySearch does not provide any detailed breakdown of its new or updated records - we're just told x number of indexed records or x number of images have been added to an existing collection. I assume logs must be kept and I have been asking for several years these might be shared with us, to save much valuable time in identifying what the new records actually are.

I get regular updates from another website I use, advising precisely what records they have added. A breakdown is given on: for what parish, what year span, and the type of record (baptisms, burials or marriages) that have been added. I can then carry out a search based purely on that - i.e. no need to go over old ground.

The reasons FamilySearch will advise it cannot do the same are related to the limited resources of a non-commercial enterprise. The amount of records it puts online are vast, so it would take a great deal of time to provide the sort of detail you and I would like.

Therefore, I would not expect anything along the lines of your request to be provided any time soon.

MandyShaw1

I have been using the browser-based Collections API, with a Chrome 'json output' extension, from a Windows command prompt, like this:

for /l %i in (0,1,40) do start "" https://www.familysearch.org/platform/records/collections?start=%i00&count=100

to get a list of Collections with last modified timestamps that I can then interrogate to see which of the Collections relevant to me need re-checking.

Can anyone confirm that the 'modified' timestamp in each Collection's json will genuinely represent the last change made to the Collection? I am concerned that this may not be as simple as I think!

(It obviously remains a pain to have to then do my search on each modified Collection and re-export the metadata page by page, given the lack of any sort of Records API, but I do take the point made above about all this being a non-profit undertaking.)

Thanks.

Áine Ní Donnghaile

@MandyShaw1 You can view all collections https://www.familysearch.org/search/collection/list, sort by the column last updated, descending, and filter by location using the Collection Title box.

Since FS uploads small batches of new records constantly, the list is ever-changing.