FamilySearch Digital Library: How to derive a lasting URL to link to a particular page in a book?

LegacyUser

MaureenE said: I have been looking at a book in the FS Digital Library
The Indian Army List 1921.
The catalog entry is https://www.familysearch.org/search/c...

The digital book URL, when coming from the Catalog entry is
https://www.familysearch.org/library/...

Once in the book reader the URL starts off https://www.familysearch.org then continues in the format /library/books/records/item/286965-indian-army-list-april-1921?viewer=1&offset=0#page=1&viewer=picture&o=info&n=0&q=

I want to link to digital page 548, and the link would appear to be https://www.familysearch.org then /library/books/records/item/286965-indian-army-list-april-1921?viewer=1&offset=0#page=548&viewer=picture&o=info&n=0&q=

The only problem is that when I reuse this link (joined up) , it defaults to the first page of the digital file, not to digital page 548

What is the format for a permanent URL to link to a specific page?

I image that many people would want to link to a particular page in a book. This is a feature that is commonly available in other digital libraries, where the file is not a pdf style format.

LegacyUser

Tom Huber said: Hi Maureen,

I don't know if there is a way to link to a specific page in the reader, but with material that is out of copyright, I will upload an image to memories and then source that. It resolves a lot of issues.

With works that are still in copyright, I can't do that, of course (and it likely will not be available via any kind of online reader), but then I'll make a reference to the page number within the published book and provide where the book can be found. I've done that with a book that is available from Amazon about the Wyckoff name in the record of Pieter Claesen.

LegacyUser

Julie Kay McCauley said: What about using the snipping tool when you are on that page, giving it a name so you can easily identify it. For example, 'The Indian Army List 1921 pg 548' then saving it to a folder on your computer and uploading it to the correct person on FT you want to save it to.

LegacyUser

MikeF1959 said: Assuming as you say the digital page and not actual page in the book, you can modify the url to the following and it should work (worked for me):

https://www.familysearch.org/library/...

I removed "offset=0#" before "page=548", and everything after "548".

But FS could change the way they resolve urls in the future. So the above suggestions to save the image are wise. As is making a proper citation that includes not just the book's actual page number, but also the digital one (same as looking at digitized microfilm and including "image X of Y".

LegacyUser

MaureenE said: Thank you all for your comments, and a special thanks to
MikeF1959 for his solution that the URL is of the form
https://www.familysearch.org then continuing in the format /library/books/records/item/286965-indian-army-list-april-1921?viewer=1&page=548

Tech Team, if the link at the top of the webpage for the book needs modification to produce a permanent link to a specific page , it would be good if there was a "box" somewhere on the reader "Link to this page"
As an example, the HathiTrust Digital Library book reader (random book file) with the latter function
https://babel.hathitrust.org/cgi/pt?i...

The British Library Digital reader also has this function with a Share symbol available at the foot of the reader, which contains the page URL
random example:
http://access.bl.uk/item/viewer/ark:/...

LegacyUser

MaureenE said: I'm disappointed that FamilySearch have not yet made what appears to me to be a simple change to enable a specific page to be linked.

However MikeF1959's method above still works - thank you MikeF1959

I would be interested to know if in fact there are ANY FamilySearch Tech team working on the Digital Library/Books. Or have they all been terminated/redirected or moved on?

There are still "dead links" on the FamilySearch Digital Library Main Page which have been there for months, which personally I think shows that the Digital Library is given zero priority. This was previously advised in a post June 06, 2019
BUG - FamilySearch Digital Library - Main Page
https://getsatisfaction.com/familysea...

LegacyUser

Jeff Wiseman said: MaureenE,

Unfortunately nothing is PERMANENT on the internet. Sites are constantly being rearranged so assigning a URL today doesn't mean it will be there later. In fact, it likely WILL change! I had a collection of bookmarks from10-15 years ago and most of them no longer work. That's why the only reliable way to do this is to create a proper citation as a source using all the correct bibliographic references and copy any pertinent content text into your citation as notes.

There IS actually at least one exception to this and that is any websites that have been registered as following some international library archiving standards. Anything in "https://www.familysearch.org/library..." is NOT of that standard. However:
https://familysearch.org/ark:/61903/... (the first part of most sources on FamilySearch records) *IS* based on that standard.

The "familysearch.org/ark:/" component identifies it as an archive belonging to the company FamilySearch, and the 61903 is the registered NAAN (Name Assigning Authority Number) assigned to Familysearch. Other examples can be seen at:

https://n2t.net/e/pub/naan_table.html

It's sort of like an online library card catalog, and as such is not supposed to change much when things have been archived there.

So don't rely on URLs unless they are to the ark type library files. You can include them for convenience, but make sure that you have a proper citation set up so that others can find the source if the URL goes bad.

BTW, note that some sites like Ancestry, Fold3, and My Heritage appear to NOT be Name Assigning Authorities (unless it is under some other not so obvious name). So to me, references to URLs in Ancestry also don't provide much of a promise of stability over time either!

LegacyUser

Paul said: I agree with Jeff. In the long-term such URL links are likely to become useless. I believe the only "guarantee" from FamilySearch is that links to its indexed records should remain for the foreseeable future.

Many of the FamilySearch URLs in my sources sections no longer work - this appears to be mainly due to record custodians, etc., withdrawing the rights to the attached images. I always advise to save (download) a copy of any material important to you to your hard drive. As I say, in the long-term you should not expect to continue finding these images, books, etc. on the FamilySearch site (or elsewhere on the internet). So put them in a personal space on your hardware asap!

LegacyUser

David Newton said: Another very widely used scheme like the ARK standard is the DOI (Digital Object Identifier) scheme. You'll find it very widely used in scientific journals. For example https://doi.org/10.1021/jacs.9b02820 goes to an article in the latest issue of the Journal of the American Chemical Society. The full citation in that case would be:

Chemistry of Lipid Membranes from Models to Living Systems: A Perspective of Hydration, Surface Potential, Curvature, Confinement and Heterogeneity
Halil I. Okur, Orly B. Tarun, and Sylvie Roke
Journal of the American Chemical Society 2019 141 (31), 12168-12181
DOI: 10.1021/jacs.9b02820

Notice that the DOI is at the end of the citation and that it can be turned into a URL simply by adding the doi.org host name. However although the DOI will allow tracking down the article, it's hardly human-readable! Hence the fact that there is still the need for a full citation.

There are also an awful lot of other identification schemes that are around for many types of media and concepts. The most well known is the ISBN scheme for single publications (that issue of JACS the article above is in will have an ISBN). However there is also the ISSN (International Standard Serial Number) which refers to the publication series itself. JACS has one, Nature another, the New York Times will have one and indeed any modern general issue serialised publication will. But wait, there's more! Each of the three scientists who are the authors of that paper will likely have an ORCID (Open Researcher and Contributor IDentification) which is a subset of the ISNI (International Standard Name Identifier).

For music we have the ISWC (International Standard musical Work Code) and the ISRC (International Standard Recording Code) and ISMN (International Standard Music Number). For audiovisual works we have the ISAN (International Standard Audiovisual Number). Heck there's even one for archives and libraries! That's the ISIL (International Standard Identifier for Libraries and related organisations).

LegacyUser

MaureenE said: Thanks all for the comments.

Regarding the catalog page for the book files, as an example the book mentioned in my original post
Indian army list, April 1921

Firstly I have found at least three different URLs for the catalog record. Has anyone an opinion as to what is likely to be the most permanent, or even the "official". They all start off with https://www.familysearch.org/library/... and I will break them up so that they display in full
https://www.familysearch.org/library/... /records/item/286965-redirection
https://www.familysearch.org/library/... /records/item/286965-indian-army-list-april-1921
http://www.familysearch.org/library/b... idurl/1/286965
(and why is the 3rd one http, where as the first two are https?)

The first is the URL if you get to the book digital file through the (Main) Catalog
The second is the URL if you search in the Digital Library Search (with some irrelevant bits deleted).

The third is from the Digital Library Catalogue page where there is an icon Share
if you click on this there is an option for
Twitter
Facebook
Google +
Pinterest
Send email
Copy link

Family Search, how about adding a Share icon on each INDIVIDUAL PAGE.

It is of interest (to me anyway) that I can derive a link to a specific page using the 3rd URL above in the form (and the page example from my earlier post)
http://www.familysearch.org/library/b... idurl/1/286965?viewer=1&page=548
(but joined up into one URL, and thanks to MikeF1959 ). Does anyone have views as to whether this is a more "permanent link" ? And does the fact that it is http, rather than https, make a difference?

If there was a Share icon on each INDIVIDUAL PAGE I could just copy from that.
I would think if people want to SHARE with others, they are more likely to want to share individual pages rather then the whole book.

LegacyUser

Jeff Wiseman said: That's interesting, although some of those seem to be specific to a single organization as far as the URL goes (e.g., anything using the Digital Object Identifier scheme is only used to find things at doi.org).

If I understand correctly, the thing that I think was interesting about the ARK is that an organization that is registered as a NAAN can almost assign their own detailed structuring for their references (within limits). So many companies can all utilize the same ARK references, but each can do it on their own personal website and even with slightly different URL formats. Because they are registered as ARK related NAANs they must maintain certain common elements so URLs pointing to ARK items in their website won't change as long as the organization has a web presence.

I am certainly no expert on these things. Just an interested observer :-)

LegacyUser

Jeff Wiseman said: It is also interesting to notice that when a memory is used to create a source, that source does not have an ARK URL. So there's a place that has a potential for change as well.

LegacyUser

David Newton said: Yes but why would a memory have an ARK URL? A memory is under the control of the uploader who could just decide to delete it on a whim one day. Memories are not intended to be permanent, archival things like the actual record transcripts are.

LegacyUser

Jeff Wiseman said: Understood. However, I have created sources in the past based on a memory that was a photograph of things like family pedigree in pages of a family bible. I have the original photograph, a cousin has the bible. The easiest way at the time to capture that in a source was to just upload the photograph and create a source from it to attach to all the family members it referenced.

LegacyUser

MaureenE said: So sad that a simple thing like a link to a specific page in the FamilySearch Digital Library has not been introduced. It's almost a year since my original post.

Thanks to MikeF1959 I have just now been able to derived a required URL, but every time I want to do it I need to check back on this topic and am reminded that FS have not made any changes

LegacyUser

Robert Wren said: MuareenE, Have you considered RecordSeek? https://recordseek.com/

It seems to do exactly what you asking for - if you are trying to add the page to either a FamilySearch or Ancestry person.

"Record a website as a source, with virtually no effort.
RecordSeek makes it effortless to record your source citations from the web. Get started, and start saving sources.
Install one of our browser extensions"

LegacyUser

Jeff Wiseman said: As robert points out, RecordSeek is the most convenient way of doing this. I use it frequently. But you just need to remember that there is no guarantee that the URL that it provides will be there tomorrow, so it is important to add all the Title, publishing information, page number, etc. in the source created by RecordSeek so that it can be found again if the URL ever fails.

LegacyUser

Robert Wren said: Good points, Jeff, (especially helpful is the image, or page, number)

I did try a test of linking Maureen's digital FS book. It did only link to the title page although the page number seems to appear in the url. I'm sure I've linked to specific pages before.

LegacyUser

Jeff Wiseman said: I have done that before as well, but some items are basically just a film number and an image number without a direct URL. Although a page number in the reference may be given, frequently the image number seems to be just as useful, so I always record both when I can.

I have not done this a whole lot, but I remember that sometimes when I'm on a specific image and do an attach, it will keep the "direct connection" and sometimes it would not. I may be confusing things that I've found in the catalog with things outside of the "ark" area. I need to look at this a little closer to really understand what's going on.

In any event, the publishing info/page number is important if the vital image of that publication disappears for some reason.

LegacyUser

Jeff Wiseman said: I did have a quick look at MaureenE's book. All the stuff in the URL that is picked up from a given page (after the "?") appears to be just controls for the viewer. It sort of looks like something has been changed in the viewer such that the direct access isn't possible by URL. If you actually enter the URL from a given page, the system CHANGES it to something else on a different page.

This might be an example of how things can change on a site that can foul up your URLs.

I'm not sure what all that means but If I were to use this particular source, I would probably go to the main digital library record item page (i.e., not the Catalog page for it) and copy the URL from the Share pulldown. This URL has the book item number for the FS library so if something down in the library moved around, this same URL should get you there since it appears that there is automatic redirection being supported.

http://www.familysearch.org/library/books/idurl/1/286965



Anyway, I would then record the page and image number in the citation description so that a person could open the viewer and go straight to the page that they want. Yes, this is not a direct URL, but I'm not sure how those other pages are handled by the viewer. All I know is I cannot rely on those viewer arguments to get me there.

By the way the "page=3" type reference in the viewer's argument list appears that it is NOT the page number--it is the IMAGE number. This is why I think it is important to record BOTH the page number and the image# in the citation description.

Since this source would likely be cited from many different places, it makes sense to just set the book as the main source, and then specifically add the page/image in each of the citations as necessary.

LegacyUser

MaureenE said: Thanks for the comments.

At one time there was stated to be a team looking at enhancements to the Family Search Digital Library. That seems quite a time ago, but if such a team is still in existence, I hope they will consider this aspect, as for other Digital Libraries with a Book reader of this general type, it is a standard feature that there is a unique URL for each page, in addition to the URL for the book.

As MikeF1959 pointed out, you can tweak the FS URL, but why does FS provide something you have tweak.

Gene J Preston

The "link to page" break frequently. Many times, if I just make sure I prepend the link with https:// AND I am signed in to FamilySearch, the link will work, but all too frequently, even these steps won't ensure the link hits.

Really frustrating. --Gene