Research data

LegacyUser

C Shirra said: This is an idea for the Computer Programmers.
When I go to Ancestry to do research the persons name, birth date, death date, etc is included in the search for that persons data and appears in a window on the upper left of the screen.

When I am in Family Search I have to manually enter all that data to find anything for my person.

Can it be programmed to automatically enter the persons data?

Cameron

LegacyUser

Jordi Kloosterboer said: Click on FamilySearch icon under search records.

then it will fill in the fields but not all as you probably want. Ancestry is better as this as you have pointed out.

LegacyUser

Brett said: Cameron

Firstly, "Welcome" to this "FamilySearch" ("GetSatisfaction") 'Feedback' Forum.

Secondly, "Official 'FamilySearch' Representatives", do monitor; and, sometimes, participate in, this Forum.

Thirdly, I am just another User/Patron, just like yourself (and, happen to be a Member of the Church).

Many Users/Patrons who regularly participate in this Forum who have a great deal of knowledge and experience with "FamilySearch", like to assist/help other Users/Patrons like yourself.

Finally, I certainly do not know or understand what you are doing to " ... have to manually enter all that data to find anything for my person ... "

If you are on an individual's/person's "Person/Details" page/page; and, use the "Research Records" on the 'right-hand-side' of the page/screen; and, the "FamilySearch" link, as indicated by 'Jordi', the "Details" (ie. Name; Birth; Marriage; and, Death - provided that they recorded against the individual/person) ARE prepopulated in the "Search".

the same hold true for searches using the "Ancestry.com"; and/or, "FindMyPast.oc.uk; and/or,MyHeritage.com"; and/or, so forth provided you have such access.

Unlike, 'Jordi', I do not know what else you want.

And, also, unlike, 'Jordi', I consider that "FamilySearch" does just as good as a job at it as "Ancestry.com" or the like in this respect.

Where exactly are you in "FamilySearch" when you say that you " ... have to manually enter all that data to find anything for my person ... "?

Brett

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LegacyUser

Lundgren said: The values that are populated using the link mentioned above are a reasonable set that return rented results for most people in the tree.

Adding or removing values in the search will allow you to customize the search for the particular record you are looking for.

I.E. Adding death information will not help you find birth marriage or census records...

Marriage info will not help you find birth records.

LegacyUser

Jeff Wiseman said: My biggest issue is that the parents and spouse always have to be manually entered, even though the information is at the top of the page. I have to do this all of the time when I search as Jordi pointed out in his comment.

It would seems far easier to delete search fields I do not need, than to have to hand type each name in.

Is there a reason why these relationship data are not pre-populated in the search criteria? What am I missing?

LegacyUser

Jeff Wiseman said: But adding parent or spouse names can.

LegacyUser

Lundgren said: Generally, when using the familysearch's record search, it is best to start with a small amount of information and add more to target the type of record you are interested in.

For places, start wide and then narrow. Adding a death place of Texas, USA can preclude a death record that is in California, USA, even if it is the right record, because of the incorrect death place (if you aren't sure for example).

Also ONLY use exact if you are getting too many results. If you put an exact next to a mother/father's name, any records with out that exact name and spelling (nearly all of the census records when a person is an adult) will be excluded.

Parents and spouse are sometimes found on some marriage records. That is about the only ones I can think of off the top of my head that may include both of those.

Pre-populating that information would allow you to target marriage records, but that is probably not the starting place most users are interested in.

The pre-populated values are a good starting place, but you will need to modify them to target the records you are interested in finding either by adding more information, or in some cases removing information.

Immediately adding more information will generally narrow your results and cause you to miss some records that you might otherwise find.

To get the best results, determine the records you are interested in finding, check to see if we have a collection that covers that record, and then search for the type of information that would be on that record.

It is easy to spend hours looking for a record that we do not have. If you are able to find a record on another site that we do have, but not on familysearch, we are interested in learning more.

If you can provide the record you have found on another site, and the searches you are using on our site w/o success (in a NEW POST for each one) we will look into search and our system to understand what is happening.

LegacyUser

Christine said: Would it be possible to add tips for searching somewhere? I often help people who say there are no records for their relatives since they don't come up in the first few searches. I have to show them that for places in England they have to manually type the place since the default is United kingdom, England instead of Basford, Nottingham, England, United Kingdom, for instance.

LegacyUser

Brett said: Christine

'Yes', that "United Kingdom" that is 'tacked' on the end is certainly useless.

I always delete that "United Kingdom", and, is many cases, just leave it as "England" (or, "Wales"; or "Scotland" - I do not have too many in "Northern Ireland"). Most times I do not even enter a, Place; and/or, County/Shire.

Oh, and I hate those " ' " at the beginning and end - are they really necessary!?

Brett

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LegacyUser

Paul said: Jeff

As Lundgren suggests, it is better to start with as little detail as possible. For example, if I am searching for a death (in England post 1865), to get "good" results I have to delete the place name from the Birth details and also any marriage details that have been carried across from the person page.

A problem with parents coming across automatically relates to census returns. Many of my relatives (male in this example) were widowed and the assumed mother of the children shown in the census record turns out to be the biological parent of, say, only half of them! Having "Mary" automatically populating one of the parent fields would not help if the father had subsequently married an "Ann".

To the contrary of what is being requested, I nearly always find myself deleting much of the detail that comes across - or amending in the case of that "United Kingdom" issue, whereby the place name carried across is far too vague to search on.

Also, completing details manually encourages us to use the filters provided to narrow the search(es) down to specific collections - depending on whether we are looking for results relating to a particular type of record: e.g. birth, marriage, death, census, immigration.

LegacyUser

Jeff Wiseman said: Thanks for the advice.

Some of that tends to be different to what I've used elsewhere in other types of searches, but since we are doing searches here on data that frequently is not exact, I do understand that the underlying mechanism must be different in many ways. So I am always interested in tricks that may not be intuitive to me at this time.

By the way, when I have occasionally have not been able to find a record on FamilySearch, I have gone to another site (like Ancestry.com) and been able to find it there only to discover that the record reference there only points back to FamilySearch. I can then look at the indexed data on the FS record to see exactly how it was indexed. I can then go back to FamilySearch and do a search there with the exact data spelling that I found via Ancestry. That will find the record on FamilySearch for me. Sometimes the search engine on Ancestry works a bit better on FamilySearch records than FS's search engine does.

LegacyUser

Jeff Wiseman said: One of the issues that I've found is that frequently for me, the default data will produce several millions of hits. Then, even adding a single, non-exact piece of information to the search criteria can drop the search results to zero hits. Usually, in the areas that I've been searching (southern Ohio), removing data will result in astronomical numbers of hits.

It doesn't behave quite intuitively to the way I think, so I'm still trying to get a better feel for the way the search criteria actually affects the outcome.

LegacyUser

Lundgren said: Please feel free to share specific cases where you run into this in new post.

It gives us an opportunity to improve the system, or at least understand why it isn't found. Adding examples into existing posts are easily missed.

LegacyUser

Jeff Wiseman said: I will try to. Frequently I am moving so fast (in order to have a continuity of thought while validating families) when finding and adding sources, that I am loath to stop and document the anomaly at the moment I find it :-)

LegacyUser

Jordi Kloosterboer said: Oooo I have done this too (looking on another site only to get pointed back to familySearch). I'll do this too.

LegacyUser

Lundgren said: Try playing with wider places. (I.E. USA rather than Ohio, or Ohio rather than the county) The search places (on the website on the upper left) also work differently than the filters in the lower left.

The filters in the lower left show you counts of actual results and where they are, you can drill into those to narrow within the results you have. Adding values in the upper left will perform new searches, not directly narrow the results from the previous searches. Again, avoid exact, unless you need it.

LegacyUser

Jeff Wiseman said: I usually use the collections tab for filtering but I guess I haven't taken advantage of the filters in the lower left. Something new to try!

So I'm getting the impression that the approach is to get as big a "bite" as you can on the initial search, and then use all those filters to "refine" the search

So instead of searching on a birth place of "Ohio", I should leave it more general (possibly blank) and then filter on a birthplace of Ohio?

LegacyUser

Lundgren said: You can also use the filters to narrow down time ranges.

This is just one option. There are several videos of presentation on youtube that have been done at rootstech on how to get the most of search.

Look for videos by Robert Kehrer and John Huff.