Questions from Slovakia
My sister, (name removed) is serving a mission in Slovakia. She does medical supervision, but is also a genealogist. She is trying to get help from the FamilySearch consultant for Bratislava, Brother (name removed) (email removed), who has some specific questions. I will advise them to join this group, and here are his current questions sent to my sister in an email.
"Thank you (name removed),
I checked the new AI indexing option in the Get Involved Tab button - there is no Slovak region or Slovak language available to perform spell checks/corrections yet. I do not know (name removed). If possible, could you please forward this email to her. In principle, we would like to have these 4 questions answered.
1. People in Slovak archives say that since 2022ish there will be a digitalization of Slovak records 1895-1906 performed by Family Search. Was this already started? Will Family Search send there digitalization material/tools soon or how will that take place?
2. Is it technically feasible to have records that contain data of younger age than 110 years available in some form on Family Search?
3. Genealogy enthusiasts provided helpful information found here Slovenské matriky zo 16. až 19. storočia | Matriky Genedict where under village/town can be found records available and in some case important information that such records are not to be found in FS catalog under this village, while they were incorrectly placed. Please, see here for example below. This may be helpful for FS engineers to correct these mistakes. Is there any effort in this direction done?
4. Repeating questions on indexing projects. Could you direct us on this as well? - Here we have a partial answer on the IDX system that replaced the former indexing working routine. So the next question is: when will it be available to perform transcription verifications in Slovak language?
Bonus question: How could we obtain a solid communication channel from FamilySearch as a FamilySearch center in Bratislava? Who is the regional representative for Slovakia who could help us? I am in email-phone contact with (name removed), but he is a product manager for FS in Frankfurt and does not know how to answer our questions. We really need to establish a bridge here. Please, help us."
His Whatsapp number is (number removed)
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Thank you Joy, Here is an answer I received to some of those questions, It is a second answer. I will post the first answer I recieved also. I have started using the search option for Slovakia and adding hints and families to the page. I also am going to Terchová soon to look at the graveyard and to try to talk to a priest in the Catholic church there to look at some records for a family I am helping here in my church branch in Zilina, Slovakia.
(name removed),I appreciate (name removed) including me on this message as I have some additional insight into potential projects we could use your assistance on. In April, the FamilySearch indexing tool rode off into the sunset by decision of our tech staff, leaving the other activies (name removed) has described below to fill the void. In many instances, records in languages that are not yet part of the AI indexing are not available for review which is definitely the case with the Czech and Slovak records.Despite the loss of the indexing tool, FamilySearch still has a large collection of indexed records from both areas. In fact, the Slovakia Church Book collection (link) is regularly in the top 5 most visited collections on the site. It has 22 million records to go through and Ian has shown you one potential way to create trees from those records. Those trees can be linked together so members can hook their own trees into them and provide names for temple submissions. These 22M records represent all the church book content FamilySearch digitized in Slovakia at regional archives in Prešov, Bytča, Košice, Levoča, Banská Bystrica, Nitra, and Bratislava. We are currently in negotations with the National Archives in Bratislava to preserve additional content but these deals take time and I don’t have a timeline for when we will see new content from Slovakia. Hopefully soon! We do have 2 cameras actively capturing content on the Slovakia/Ukraine border in Uzhhorod/Zarkarpattia and you can checkhereusing either of those two localities to see the large amount of content coming in. As that border has changed positions more than once, they may be capturing Slovak content stored in Ukraine – worth a shot.The Czech Republic has 7 active cameras capturing content in 4 locations (Plzeň, Třeboň, Brno, and Litomerice). That can also be access in the same image portal as I provided the link for with the Slovak content, just use a different locality in the search. In the past 10 years, FamilySearch has been to every regional archive except for Praha Regional and the National Archive – they are doing their own digitization. We have nearly 12M indexed church books (nearly all our digitized content for church books) and area working on digitizing the national censuses 1860-1921. The 1900, 1910, and 1921 will slowly come out over the next 18 months and we couldn’t be more excited to make these available. We will also continue to capture at these regional archives and the smaller district archives as opportunities are available. Unfortunately, I don’t have any projects on-hand to participate in except for the ones Ian has described.I have included one of our best Czech researchers on this email, (name removed), to see if she has additional counsel and I believe she will have many things to talk to you about.(Nameremoved)Content Strategy, EuropeFamilySearch InternationalSister Brenda Whitney (name removed), currently a Senior Missionary serving in Slovakia with the Czech/Slovak Mission for the next 2 years.
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@JoyWhitneyStubbs and @brendawhitney1 Your posts were edited to protect the privacy of living people. Please see the Community Code of Conduct for more details.
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Thank you for your help
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Have you tried asking any of these questions in the Get involved Indexing research group? There might be some experts in your area within that group.
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Thank you - nothing yet in Get involved
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Hello community members-
I'm responding here because I have some data organization concerns similar to the original poster/questioner.
I am doing research on the communities of Sobotiste, Myjava, Tura Luka, and Vrbovce in Western Slovakia near the Czech border. I started my research in 2020, and greatly appreciate the FamilySearch site. At that time, only the baptism records in my small area of Slovakia were indexed (and there were gaps). Since that time, more indexing has definitely been added to the Slovakia church records. I can attest to the fact that significantly more indexing came online, because I did a lot of work on my own before it appeared. You can see some of the indexing dates by looking at individual personal records.
The quality of the indexing varies. I tell my genealogy pen pals to be sure and read through the records directly with their own eyes, not even relying on indexing appearing next to the records.
I have found some layout errors in the menu link structure of the records for several towns I study. I think there are records that could be accessed if properly linked. It seems I sometimes stumble into the records from searching for names but I can't get to the records through the menu structure. Yet the menu structure is the fastest way for me to do the research I need to do.
Long ago, I reported these errors by internal messaging to the help system but I haven't seen changes. I also remember writing externally to a FamilySearch Eastern Europe librarian whose e-mail I found somewhere in official materials. I never heard back.
The search for a more effective way to get menu structure errors for the record fixed, and missing data surfaced, brought me to this group tonight.
Does anyone have suggestions on how to get FamilySearch menu structure corrections done? I would really appreciate it. Also, if anyone has an interest in the towns I listed above, I am happy to help others find their way through the collections. I occasionally check my mailbox here. After 5 years, I've only gotten follow-ups to posts I've made in this community's predecessor, so it's not very lively. But I will look from time to time.
-Romi Krc
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Good morning. It looks like you are already in communication with the Czech area researchers from FamilySearch who will know what additional information is available in this area.
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@Romi Krc By menu structure I assume you are referring to waypoints—the links you see when you pick the option to browse a collection. I can validate your concerns over errors that sometimes make it difficult to locate correct films, such as villages showing up in the wrong county or missing altogether. There is an explanation to the lack of response to your previous complaints. Over two years ago engineering made the decision to go a different direction and thus, no edits or updates have been or are currently being made to waypoints. They will eventually no longer be needed.
For anyone struggling to discover if FamilySearch has records for a specific location, I would suggest using a Keyword catalog search:
An Image search is also helpful for discovering what other surrounding villages has records that can be accessed on FamilySearch:
If this doesn't answer your questions, don't hesitate to post other concerns and we will try to address them.
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Hi @SerraNola . Thank you for the explanations. I am just starting to understand what the disappearance of the "waypoints" will mean for my work. And I do understand about technological change and software obsolescence issues.
However, I think there is still unindexed content for at least the village of Tura Luka because it was missed due to waypoint labels not being properly created. Possibly also for Sobotiste.
Is there anyone I could specifically contact if I did a writeup on the missed material? Keyword searching will not find unindexed images. I will be able to locate the collections through searching the towns. But others may not be as lucky.
Please advise if there is a best way to report issues so that I could get a response. Even if it's just to say there is not enough labor time to make a fix.
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