1930 United States Census; Attaching unindexed records

LegacyUser

Michael Carson said: Occasionally, individuals that appear in the 1930 census are not indexed. In order to attach the census to that individual, as a source, I want to be able to attach the record following the instructions for attaching records from an unindexed record (which it is for that individual).

The problem is that the "Attach to Family Tree" button is disabled (for all of the 1930 census) when I use this approach. When I find an index record, I can attach the record - which includes the census image.

Since I am attaching the census image when I do so with an index record (if one exists), why can't I attach the census image when looking at it as an unindexed record?

LegacyUser

Juli said: (The "why" is the basic chicken-and-egg: the computer doesn't think the unindexed records exist, because they're not indexed.)

Until they modify the index-correction feature to allow adding missing records, I know of two workarounds: you can use the Source Box button on the image to create a citation, and then attach that to the profile using the "Add Source - Attach from Source Box" option on the Sources tab, or you can create an "agnostic" source citation longhand, using the "Add Source - Add New Source" option.

LegacyUser

Michael Carson said: Thanks. Although I didn't mention those 2 work-around; I am aware of them. But it seems that just attaching the census via the "Attach to Family Tree" button should be available.

I can't tell if this is a "contractual issue"; although not a Restricted record (as normally defined).

LegacyUser

Juli said: The blue button is unavailable because the image has index entries associated with it, so FS wants you to use Source Linker. This is universal across the whole site and all collections: if there are any index entries associated with an image, then the direct-attachment tool is not available for that image. (Sometimes you get lucky and a page was filmed twice but only indexed once, so you can browse forward or backward one image and get the blue button.)

_Why_ FS treats the finding aid as the superior or more desirable source is kind of a mystery to me. I suppose it has to do with what's computerized and automateable.

LegacyUser

Jeff Wiseman said: Juli, I think that it has to do with mandates that FS likely has about supporting ALL people on the site regardless of their skill set. At least, that would make sense to me.

And, treating an entire film as though it is indexed when only part of it is indexed, is sort of like treating an entire film as restricted access when only part of it is restricted. The films are your "least common denominator", so initially building functions to the whole film has likely been a strategic choice to get get software functions up and running fast. Then they can refine it later (at least that would typically be the plan)

As far as citing the source image directly, I think you might be more correct than you know! I recently tried just using the index to get to the image, and then take the image as a source itself through my source box and attaching that citation to the source list on the record. But the result was weird. The citation seems to have hooked up to BOTH the index source as well as the image source. If I went into the source linker to look at it, and then disconnect all the pieces there, I could then go back and I had just the image source still attached to the source list.

It was weird and I'd have to spend some time playing with it to figure out how to make it work. But then, that would just be a kludge that would likely break when they made the next change to how those things are handled (kind of like using green icons for things they weren't intended for :-)

You would think that it would be easy enough to go into an indexed source and simply bypass it to the image and set up a citation to there. I suspect that the "do this" and "do that" criteria for how attachments work may be oversimplified thus preventing this type of thing.

LegacyUser

Juli said: The indexed-versus-not determination is per image, not per film. As I said, sometimes you can page forward or back one and get the same page but with the blue button active.

LegacyUser

Jeff Wiseman said: That's useful to know. I guess that when hints are generated (i.e., to indexed data), they want you to attach the index hints to the records as citations so that the search stuff can keep track of things. If you cite the indexed images directly, they'll still have these hints laying around and not contributing to the search and hint engines.

Except for images that are only partially indexed (does that really happen?). Then the parts that are not indexed are totally inaccessible without a lot of "educated" fooling around :-)

LegacyUser

Juli said: Yes, indexing misses stuff All The Time. I've encountered everything from randomly-missing single entries to entire pages that weren't indexed (they did the verso but not the recto, as if it were a two-page spread, only it wasn't).

The finding-aid-as-primary setup probably is connected to the hinting mechanism, but it has many undesirable consequences. One of them is the current thread's problem with unavailable citation tools. Another is the ubiquitous misconception that the finding aid _is_ the data. People get all worked up that FamilySearch has their ancestors wrong, as if the misindexing somehow sets the error in stone and changes history.

If we could universally correct misindexing (including adding missing entries and removing extraneous ones), then the index-primary approach might be made to work. The current half-baked setup has a lot of annoyances.

LegacyUser

Jeff Wiseman said: So I just found one of these today. Although it was not a real big deal getting around it. Sarah Ann Freshour is actually listed in the 1870 US Census along with other members of her family. However, the INDEX for that census page is missing her name. So basically I did the following:

I went to her sister Margaret Freshour LLWK-HV6 who is also on that census but is also in the indexed data. I opened her source list and opened the citation to the 1870 US Census. Then go and "View the Original Document".

(Do NOT use the URL as that points to the index data from the 1870 census that is specifically for Margaret)

When the original document opens. Note that the URL is a persistent ARK type URL for the image source for that page. Now go to the Source box button and select it, then select "Add to Source Box and Save.

Go to your source box and edit the source to change the title so something generic and not person centric about the image as you may want to use it for other family members as well. I put in a description notes of the family names that were shown in the image and a Reason to Change Source as something like "needed to create a citation to the generate image source as the indexed data is missing parts of it".

This didn't seem to be too much of an issue to create your own citation of the image itself instead of the index file, but in doing so, I do wonder how stable the ARK URL for the generic image file would be. FS seems far more focused on all the persistence URLS for index files these days.