Start treating film items as separate entities

LegacyUser

Marek Marecki said: Hello Everyone.

I'm interested in books from Hryniv, Ukraine.
https://www.familysearch.org/search/c...

Film 2377697 (4933593) despite being digitized (DGS number assigned) is still locked for viewing and have only reel symbol by it. I contacted support by chat and got information that it is because there are other items on the film that are quite new and it cannot be published. When you search by film number there are in fact some books from Grzybowice parish that are from 1944. I am not completely buying this answer and i will explain why at the end of post. But for now I'll say it's ok. It sounds reasonable. And now we come to the post topic.

I'm interested only in items 6-10. These books are more than 100 years old and could be published. They are locked only because they were photographed on the same film with Grzybowice. Familysearch recently discontinued film lending service and I cannot order this film anymore. I can't go to Ukraine to see the original books. Why can't we just treat items as separate objects then. We are not limited by physical form as we are operating in electronic data. Why lock some books only because other books are to young to publish. Can't we just assign new DGS number to Hryniv books and publish them independently from Grzybowice so I don't need to wait many years until whole film could be unlocked.

And speaking of film 2377697. Films from Lviv Archive were recently opened for everyone to view at home. If you'll check Greek Catholic Consistory collection from Lviv Archive you'll see that from 911 films only 2 have reel symbol by them: 2377681 and 2377697. And in Roman Catholic Consistory there are another 326 films (all open to view at home) and some are reaching year 1948. So in total, there are 1236 films with catholic metrical books from Lviv archive in Familysearch and only 2 of them are locked. That's why I don't see why Hryniv can't be unlocked.

Greek Catholic Consistory:
https://www.familysearch.org/search/c...

Roman Catholic Consistory:
https://www.familysearch.org/search/c...

Thank you.
Marek

LegacyUser

A van Helsdingen said: This problem has been discussed before. I remember that a FS employee said that splitting up films that had some items that couldn't be put online due to privacy or contractal reasons was being considered by FS. There are thousands of films that could be partially opened up if this happened. I notice that many of the church books from Hryniv are already available online from any computer without restriction, so the record custodian obviously consents to FS digitizing the records- it's privacy laws that stand in the way of opening up the rest.

LegacyUser

Tom Huber said: I fully agree that multiple item films need to be treated as if each item on the film was a separate entity.

A lot is going to depend upon how the contracts were set up when the film was created.

For instance, was the film all under one contract? If so, then each element in the film will need to be renegotiated for digitized distribution.

Regardless, digital access rights were often not part of the original contract and as such those have to be negotiated. I do not believe that anyone saw the day when microfilm stock would no longer be available and that all records previously recorded on film would now be recorded digitally. For a lot of records, the conversion is not being considered, though where genealogical records are concerned, that isn't the case.

We don't know all the reason behind to delay in releasing digitized versions to the public, but A van Helsdingen covered some of those we've been told. In other cases, it may be nothing more than a matter of legal staffing available for new contractual agreements or the availability of original content owners for negotiations.

Definitely a complex mess. I really wish it wasn't so, but decades of record filming are involved. We're fortunate to have what we have.

LegacyUser

Paul said: The organisation has made some baffling decisions in the past relating to microfilms. The situation where there is one record custodian involved is understandable, but why put totally unrelated material on one film? It's not that the lengths of the films were always the same.

Incidentally, one thing I don't miss with the demise of microfilms is the 16mm format. What was that about? My eyesight wasn't too bad 20 years or so ago, yet I still struggled to enlarge the image sufficiently using the dreadful 16mm readers at my local FHC.

To return to the main subject, I hope the issue of splitting the restricted / unrestricted material will start being addressed once the main digitisation exercise has been completed.

LegacyUser

Marek Marecki said: Thank you for responses.

I think that in this case all books where under one agreement, because they are from one archive and they form 2 large collections of catholic metrical books. And as I said before, from 1236 films only 2 are locked. There are many more films that reach the forties and are open for home viewing. Another thing is, that not so long ago all the books from Lviv Archive that you can now see at home where only available in Family History Centers. Now you can watch them at home, so someone made that decision to make them all public and it was for sure agreed with Lviv Archive.

On a broader perspective, I don't think they ever took photos from two different institutions at the same film (but I can be wrong). There could be however situation, when we have documents from different collections on one physical film and in that case we can have problem with licensing. But again, this can be easily solved by having separate DGS numbers assigned to parts of film. We are not limited by physical form, because all we are operating on is electronic data. You can arrange the pictures in whatever groups/collections you want, of course in accordance to legal agreement with original rights holder.

LegacyUser

Tom Huber said: There are instances where separately filmed items were combined onto one film. As far as I can tell, they were not part of the same collection of records.

But we have seen a number of instances where it was obvious that two different sets of records (possibly individual pages or in different folders at the archive), were filmed with no break between the sets.